


Heir Apparent

by avulle



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Gen, Lots of Cursing, Murder, Small torture, a little torture, a lot of nonsense, azula is awful in this one, but this is not that, cursing, im a fan of azula's-really-not-that-bad fic, mai and azula and ty lee go an adventure, no relation to be book of the same name, really - Freeform, sort of outsider pov, threats of unspeakable things
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-09-21
Updated: 2019-11-09
Packaged: 2020-10-25 05:34:57
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 14
Words: 88,645
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20718932
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/avulle/pseuds/avulle
Summary: One day, three years after Azula banished her father to the Earth Kingdom for having the gall to cry when Zuko got his face burned off, Azula shows back up in Mai's life.  Avatar—what Avatar—that's still a year away.  "I have a bit of a problem," is all Azula says, and in Azula-speak, "a huge problem" is an unsightly crease on her pants, and "a bit of problem" meant that your house is on fire.





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> What's that, ATLA ended literally over a decade ago, no one is reading avatar fic anymore? Pssh, what kind of reason is that to not start a 200,000 word fanfic.
> 
> Buckle up, this is going to be a long one.

My name is Mai. I don’t have a family name, because my family likes to pretend we’re royalty, even though we’re really, really not.

When I was seven years old, my parents ordered me to befriend the second daughter of the then-second son of the Fire Lord, the day after she kicked her previous "best" friend down a flight of stairs, breaking three of her ribs, and her right arm.

When I was eleven, I watched the Fire Lord burn the dreamiest boy in the fire nation's face right off, and the now-crown princess laughed while I wept.

When I was twelve, my parents were transferred to a no-name Earth kingdom colony in punishment for my tears. 

When I was thirteen, a new and more important Earth Kingdom city fell, and someone, somewhere, decided that I had paid appropriately for my sins, so my father was presented with its governorship.

Two months into my new and incredibly exciting life in the very bright and not terrible and dusty city of who-gives-a-shit, the orchestrator of the previous seven years of my life appeared before me, ready to rearrange my life, once again.

“Hello, Mai,” Azula said, standing eagerly before me, both of her hands folded tightly behind her back, with a bright, manic smile on her face. She had this way of looking at me—like my entire existence was hers, and justly so―it always made me forget just what, exactly, she was. I fell into her eyes, briefly, as all who had the misfortune of encountering her were liable to do.

Then she waited, like she always did, for me to respond, because she liked to preen.

"Princess," I said.

Azula preened like only the crown princess of the fire nation can preen, a full body preening that made sure to give her muscles a good flex and flip her obnoxiously impeccable bangs, all while smiling the smile that says she really deserves much better. It’s quite a trick―I’ve tried to do it in the mirror, but I’ve never been able to get it quite right. 

"I have a bit of a problem," Azula said, just as her bangs fell back into place, and her nose made its way down from the surface of the sun. To Azula, "a huge problem" is a unsightly crease on her pants, and "a bit of problem" means that my house is on fire. I automatically checked my house behind me, and was pleasantly surprised to find that it was not a raging blue inferno.

When I turned back to Azula, she was giving me a Very Significant look. It was through her eyelashes, because her face was kinda titled down, but her eyelashes were actually pretty short, so she was really working for it.

To Azula " I have a problem" also means "You are going to help me fix my problem."

I ran through my available excuses. I was pregnant with Zuko's baby. Tom-Tom was deathly ill, and if I left he would die of loneliness. I had defected to the side of the Earth King, and had sworn to kill Azula.

But then I remembered who I was talking to.

(My house wasn’t on fire yet, but that could always be fixed.)

"Thank Agni," I said to her. "I think I might have been about to die of boredom."

It occurred to me only after I said it that I was thanking Agni for Azula's problem, but it apparently didn’t occur to Azula, because she laughed and laughed—a high, sharp laugh that grated on my ears with little shrieks on every intake of her breath.

Azula stopped laughing, and instead of really working to give me a significant eyelash look though her still-pretty-short eyelashes, the look she gave me instead was sharp, and gleeful. She looked at me like I was the source of everything good in the world, and because I was once again making the classic mistake of meeting her gaze, I found my breath stuttering in my chest.

Azula, of course, was, as always, completely ignorant to her effect on the people around her.

It was right around then that one hundred and twenty pounds of pink former-circus-freak crashed into me at full speed, sending me into a tumble of arms and legs across my father's courtyard.

Azula looked down her nose at me like she might a particularly ugly Turtle duckling, one corner of her tilted up in a mocking little smile.

“We leave in an hour,” she said, because Azula had never considered another person's convenience in her entire life.

“Mai!” Ty Lee screamed at my face as Azula turned away. “I missed you so much!”

I watched Azula shake her butt at us as she pranced away for a weak moment before turning to Ty Lee.

“Yes, Ty Lee,” I said, patting her back because I knew she hated back-patting hugs. “I missed you, too.”

And so it all began again. 

  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And away we go!


	2. Book 0.5 - Chapter 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Featuring the full geography of all of Mai's many, many weapons, because even if you do not require it, I did. XD
> 
> tw: references to self-harm

You’d think packing up three years of life would be hard, or time consuming, but you’d be wrong. My life fit into a medium sized bag only barely large enough to fit a particularly adventurous Ty Lee.

I know this because upon seeing the bag I was planning on packing by life into, Ty lee took its very existence as a challenge, and packed herself into it.

“Look!” she said from about the level of her navel. “I can fit!”

“That's great, Ty Lee,” I said, and then played the fun game I had long since mastered called “wait for Ty Lee to get bored”. It was never a particularly long game.

In this case, it took about five minutes, which was longer than I had expected. I had almost started to think of ways to explain to Azula why Ty Lee would now spend the rest of her life folded up inside of my secret run-away-from-home bag, and we’d have to carry her around to whatever fire Azula's “little problem” was this time. Most of my plans involved not telling Azula anything, and instead finding wherever it was Jeong-Jeong was hiding these days, and making a shared little organization for Fire Nation defectors.

Thankfully, Ty Lee extracted herself from my bag before I had to imagine what it would be like to have to live in the woods.

“Why do you even have this?” Ty Lee asked as she proceeded to fail to repack by run-away-from-home bag. “And what is this?” she asked, holding up a golden trinket I definitely did not steal from my mother's jewelry box.

“That's not important,” I said.

“What about this?"

I retrieved the staggeringly poorly balanced pearl dagger from her hands, and placed it in the bag. "Also not important."

Ty Lee made a farting noise at my right temple, and continued to try and help.

"Ty Lee," I said, when she raised her foot to try and stomp my clean clothes into my bag.

"What’s up, Mai?"

"Please, don’t help."

Ty Lee narrowed her eyes and glared at me. I held her gaze until she tired of glaring at me, and decided to dance her way back to my folded futon and collapse onto it instead.

The three neat folds slid under her weight, and she rolled with it until she was lying lengthwise on my now-unfolded futon.

When she was done, she looked up at me, and made another farting noise.

"Thank you, Ty Lee," I said, because the very large Earth Kingdom man who was trying to ingratiate himself to my father by training his hedgedogs said it was very important to give hedgedogs positive reinforcement if you want them to change their behavior.

Ty Lee made a funny face not entirely unlike the face hedgedogs make when they’re about to poop on your futon, but thankfully did not follow it up by pooping on my futon.

Instead, she propped her hands up on her hands, and watched me with her discomfortingly large grey eyes as I unpacked my bag back across the floor, and then packed it properly.

"I was at a circus," Ty Lee said, because Ty Lee is incapable of tolerating silence in greater than thirty second increments. "Before Azula came to get me."

"Were you."

"It was a nice circus. We had elephanthippos and tigerlions and one really sweet badgermole. I really liked that circus."

I paused, halfway through rolling my third identical vest, and looked up at Ty Lee. Ty Lee was looking at the single broken tile on my floor that I had accidentally broken on my second day here. Her lower lip was trembling, and her eyes were a little shinier than they usually were.

"We were gonna tour the colonies," Ty Lee said, her voice clear despite her quivering lower lip. "I was going to surprise you, and we were gonna perform together in the circus and we were gonna have a sleepover, and—"

I let my half rolled vest fall loosely into my bag, and crossed the room to crouch by Ty Lee’s side.

"But now they’ll probably never come and even if they do I won’t be there!"

Before I could make a motion to comfort her, she lurched up, and adhered herself to my side.

"Once this is done, I’m sure you can go back." I settled my arms around her shoulders. "You’ve left Azula before, you can do it again."

Ty Lee shook her head.

"When she came, she said she wanted me to come, and I said no! I said I was happy, and I liked my circus. She smiled at me and she said it was fine, she just wanted to see one show. One show, and then she’d go away, and I could still be in the circus." I rubbed Ty Lee’s back, because Ty Lee liked back-rubbing hugs. "But she lied! She lied and she told Mr. Kowasaki to set all sorts of fires and remove my safety nets and she smiled at me the whole time and how could Mr. Kowasaki do that! I thought Mr. Kowasaki and I were friends."

I opened my mouth, and then closed it again.

Ty Lee twisted in my arms to stare up at me from where she was attached to my navel, nose running and her grey eyes shimmering with tears she was smearing across my robes.

_ How could he have not? _ I didn’t say.  _ Nobody could have done any better _ , I didn’t say.

"You wouldn’t have taken away my safety net, would you, Mai? You wouldn’t have let Azula set my rigging on fire, right, Mai?"

"Of course I wouldn’t," I lied.

Ty Lee’s face crumpled at my obvious lie, and she smeared her gross teary snot face across my front in retaliation.

"Why is Azula like this?" she asked. "Why can’t she just—"

_ Why can’t she just take no for an answer? _

I didn’t answer because it wasn’t really a question.

I rubbed Ty Lee’s back for another three minutes until she removed herself from my midsection with a gross snort, and then blew her nose on my futon.

Ty Lee is gross.

I walked back to my bag, picked up my wrinkled vest, and re-rolled it, packing it in next to its two identical siblings.

"Do you know where we’re going?" I asked her as I rolled a fifth vest.

Ty Lee shook her head, and then shook it again when I looked up at her.

"She didn’t tell me," Ty Lee said. She paused, just long enough for me to turn back to my bag before continuing, because she’s obnoxious like that, "but she’s been really weird?"

I set about packing in the non-vest items back into my bag, and glanced up at Ty Lee. I raised my eyebrows, and Ty Lee just shrugged.

"I don’t know what it is," Ty Lee said. "But something’s—something’s wrong."

I set the terrible pearl dagger in the crevice between two pairs of socks, and the gold trinket between the socks and my robes. I pressed them down with both hands, leaned back to inspect my handywork.

The socks were crooked, the robes had new and interesting wrinkles, and the bag was lumpy. My big black boxes of sharp implements didn’t quite lay flat, falling at a sort of diagonal angle that left the corner facing me higher than the rest, and the corner furthest from me lower.

I looked up at Ty Lee, and she was looking out the window, up at the cherry tree that I would thankfully not have to deal with blooming and filling my room with petals.

Ty Lee turned away from the window, and met my eyes. Her grey eyes were red-rimmed from the unfortunate incident with my robes.

"Great," I lied. "Fantastic."

Ty Lee tilted her head at my words, and smiled a funny little smile that didn’t look much like a Ty Lee smile at all. I turned away from her, and unlatched the button holding my now incredibly disgusting vest closed over my shirt. It caught as it came out, snagging on a stray black thread, and then stretching it, but only far enough to be visible, and not far enough to let the button free.

I tried again, and got the button free on the second try, and then glanced back at Ty Lee with my best meaningful glance.

"Do you mind?"

Ty Lee shrugged, grey eyes wide and clear and not looking away.

"Nope!"

She held my meaningful gaze with her vacantly smiling stare until I gave up, letting my vest-dress fall to the ground around me with a crunch and a clang. There went my room’s second tile. I’d like to say I hadn’t broken the first one the same way, but that would be a lie.

"Huh," Ty Lee commented from immediately behind me, at around the level of my now slightly-more-exposed butt, and I ignored her. 

I glanced down at my shirt, instead, and found that, because Ty Lee was a literal fountain of disgusting fluids, my red shirt was mottled with the same darkish stains as my vest had been. I sighed.

"This vest is empty," Ty Lee commented from her continued presence around my butt.

I responded by pulling my shirt from where it was tucked into my pants, untying the four sets of ties that held it closed, and then tossing it shirt over my shoulder, and ignoring Ty Lee’s squeals as she almost came in contact with her own bodily fluids.

"Gross!" Ty Lee exclaimed, quite accurately.

Because I had not been planning on any life-threatening encounters with Fire Nation princesses today, I only had a total of ten knives strapped to my upper foreams, with my vest and my pants empty of knives, and my wrists bare.

The sheathes around my upper forearms were looking worn, three knives showing through the sheathes on my right arm, and one showing through the left. Whenever I took off my shirt, I had to hold my hands just a little uncomfortably out from my sides, or I’d slice open my abdomen.

I briefly touched the blue fabric of my shift above the criss-crossing pattern of faint white lines beneath my ribs while I continued to consider them.

As fun as my game of constant vigilance had been, it wasn’t one I wanted to continue in the presence of Azula and Ty Lee. I unhooked the sheathes, restrained my urge to toss them at Ty Lee over my shoulder, and dropped them to the ground on either side of me. They fell with a satisfying sucking noise of metal sliding between tightly wedged stones.

Behind me, Ty Lee applauded, and when I glanced back at her, she was about half a foot behind me, and not quite managing to look me in the eye. Her gaze went from where my knives stood on either side of me, then got stuck about halfway up my abdomen, like she could see through the dark blue of my shift.

She reached forward, and slid her hands up under my shift on each side of my abdomen without breaking eye contact.

"Why did you keep them?" Ty Lee asked as she ran her fingers over my scars. They tingled with intermittent feeling as Ty Lee’s fingers settled down upon them.

"Why wouldn’t I?" I asked, moving out of her grip, and towards my closet.

"But you kept cutting yourself," Ty Lee said, just as close as she had been a moment before. "You have others, don’t you?" There was another sucking sound, and I opened the closet door.

"Sometimes, Ty Lee," I said to Ty Lee, glancing back over my shoulder, where Ty Lee was poking at the exposed edges of my knives, "it’s like you don’t understand me at all."

Ty Lee looked up at me, and then flinched, dropping one of the sheaves with a might clatter to the ground and bringing a bleeding finger up to her mouth.

"I guess not," she said, her voice garbled around her finger. I turned back to my closet, pulled the sliding door aside, and pulled off its hinges, and then flipping it to face us.

A wall of blades glittered back at me, and I sighed.

"But that doesn’t mean I don’t want to."

I didn’t jump at Ty Lee’s voice in my ear, but it was a close thing. I glanced back at her, and unblinking grey eyes stared back at me.

"Sometimes," I said to her those unblinking grey eyes, "I needed the reminder that I was alive." She blinked, and I continued. "It was so easy to forget, out here in who-gives-a-shit, Earth Kingdom. I need something to break me out of the tedium, make one day different from the last."

Ty Lee blinked, and then looked away.

"I missed you," she said. "At the circus."

Ty Lee was repeating herself. It was a bad habit she had when she wanted a very particular response. If I didn’t give her the answer she wanted, she’d just keep it going until she did.

I turned away from her, and back to my weapons collection that sometimes pretended to be a closet door. On the right side of it were a set of black silk bands, studded evenly with hard leather sheaths, that weren’t quite as black as the silk they were embedded in. None of these sleeves showed the same pattern of wear as the two sleeves that I had discarded on the ground behind me had because none of them had been used at all.

None of the bands I had worn before my father had been re-stationed fit me anymore. I had had to requisition three sets since then, as two growth spurts and then puberty mapped and then remapped the layout of my body.

I took down one, then another, then a third, then a fourth. Two to replace the ones I had removed, then two more for each bicep. They could hold twenty knives in total, which I was pretty sure wasn’t nearly enough, but it was unfortunately all I could fit onto my arms.

Beneath the bands were four sets of arrow launchers, two smaller than the others. These I slipped onto my wrists, and then crouched down to attach the larger ones to my ankles.

I hadn’t seen Ty Lee in three years. She had left for the circus two months before my father was reassigned to shit-hole, Earth Kingdom. I was eleven the last time I saw her.

I shouldn’t have recognized her, I shouldn’t have remembered her, all of my memories of her and of Azula should have been crowded out by all of the other memories I had made in shitsville, Earth Kingdom. All of the… friends I was supposed to have made.

But where those memories and friends were supposed to be, there was nothing. Endless tedium, only briefly broken up my sharp spikes of pain.

It was like Ty Lee had never been gone. It was like  _ Azula _ had never been gone.

As I tightened the ties around my right ankle, Ty Lee bent down with me, twisting her head to look at me funny while she did it. I moved to my left ankle, and she moved with me.

I took another step forward, and then began the slow process of taking twenty knives down from my wall of knives and sliding them into the sheathes on my arm, and then taking another ten, and slipping them through the slits in my hakama and sliding them into the hidden sheathes on my thighs.

I went to my closet, extracted a shirt and vest from where they lay neatly folded, on the shelf beneath a box of carved wooden figurines my mother was inexplicably convinced I liked, and above a box of broken shuriken knives I couldn’t bring myself to replace.

When I turned back, Ty Lee was immediately in front of me, her hands full of my worn sheaths, and one bloody, ruined blade.

"Do you need these?" she asked.

The blade that she had cut herself on had its tip broken, and most of its cutting edge warped. Her blood was a bright red on the fainter brown that I could never quite clean off of it.

"No," I said. I took them from her hands, and replaced them with my new, clean shirt and vest. I disposed of the broken knife and worn sheathes with all the others in the box behind me, and then pulled the shirt over my head. I let the hem of my shirt fall, and then held my hands out in front of me, measuring the length of each of my sleeves. 

The right one was a little longer than the left.

None of my shirts actually had even sleeves, although the one Ty Lee had slimed had been close.

I checked that my arrow launchers were hidden, and then set about tieing my shirt to my figure, and then tucking it back into my pants.

Ty Lee leaned forward to try and straighten out my sleeves and managed to pull them even further out of alignment. I brushed her hands away, and returned to my weapon door.

"I was wondering about that," ty Lee said as I stretched up on my tiptoes to reach the sword at the top of the door. "I've never seen you use a sword. Can you?"

"Yes."

I had taken classes on swordplay every day I could remember. I knew more ways to sever another human being’s limbs than I knew how to tie my hair.

Swords were weapons suited for nothing short of butchery, and they were, of course, my family’s traditional weapon. My swordsmanship teacher had always been my mother, because my father had married into the family.

Ty Lee giggled, like it was funny, and I slipped my head and left shoulder through the loop hanging from the sheath before she could try and snatch it away. 

She pouted at me, and I took my vest from her hands instead of acknowledging her childness.

I pulled the vest on over my shoulders, and took a moment to straighten out my lapels, making a futile effort to make it feel even, despite the sword lying diagonally across my back.

I closed the button at my front, and then shifted my lapels some more until the leather strap of my sword was hidden.

Ty Lee leaned over my shoulder, and pressed the sword down until it no longer poked up above my shoulder.

"Thank you."

Ty Lee smiled.

I turned away from her, stashed two sai daggers in the sheaths beneath each lapel, then four shuriken in the sheaths that lay diagonally on my back.

It required a bit of twisting that was as uncomfortable as it looked, and Ty Lee commented on it.

"Could you actually use those in a fight?" Ty Lee asked, leaning into my personal space, and then looking over my shoulder to the mostly invisible slits in the back of my vest.

"Yes."

It wasn’t a particularly pleasant experience, but it was possible.

Ty Lee stepped back, and looked me up and down. "You look exactly the same!" she said.

"Yes," I said. "That's the point."

I set my closet door back on its rails, and pushed it closed with a foot.

"Geez," Ty Lee said, dancing back as I moved forward, "if you've got all of that stuff hidden under your robes, what's in your big black box?"

"More of everything," I said to her as I began the arduous process of tying my bag closed. "Oil and honing stones."

A tiny oil vial filled with sensu venom, another tiny oil vial filled with coral badgersnake venom.

Before I could heave it up onto my shoulder, Ty Lee snapped it from my grasp, and heaved it onto her own shoulder.

It had to have been a solid fifty pounds, but Ty Lee held it like it was nothing. I briefly considered fighting for it, but quickly got over myself.

"Let’s head to the ship," I said, glancing around the room I had lived in for the last sixty-three days. It was discomfitingly barren, with only the three requisite fire nation banners decorating the walls.

I turned away.

"Your room in the Fire Nation was a lot more exciting than this one," Ty Lee chirped up from beside me as we pushed open the doors to my room, and stepped into the hall.

Ty Lee had a really bad habit of saying exactly what you really didn’t want her to say, exactly when you didn’t want her to say it. I had never been sure if she did it on purpose or not.

"You had all those knives and those pictures of—"

At the end of the hallway, my mother stepped around the corner, and Ty Lee fell mercifully silent. It was the first time I could remember that I was happy to see my mother.

"Mai," she said.

"Mother."

She moved her gaze from me to Ty Lee, and she gave Ty Lee her who-is-this-disgusting-peasant squint as she tried to work out who Ty Lee was.

"This is Ty Lee, you may remember her as the packing district girl who is also Princess Azula’s best friend," I said, sparing her the effort. "We’re eloping—we’re going to have a peasant wedding in Ba Sing Se, and then adopt some Earth Kingdom children to raise as our own."

If Ty Lee was surprised by my blatant lie, she didn’t show it, and if my mother believed it for even a second, she certainly didn’t show it.

"The leader of the guard has informed me of the princess’s arrival, and the captain of her ship has informed me of her formal request for your company." Azula’s  _ formal request _ . Because Azula was such a fan of asking for the things she wanted. "Please, do try to do a little better this time. I doubt our house could survive a second encounter with the princess’s…" she considered her words, weighing her distaste for what had been done to our family with her distaste for what Azula could do to her "… displeasure."

Ty Lee did her little uncomfortable quiver, matched with her uncomfortable face, which, on the whole, made her look like a hedgedog that was slowly losing the battle against its desire to piss on the rug.

"I’ll do my best to think of the honor of our house," I said.

"Please, do your best to think of Tom-Tom," my mother said.

I closed my hands over each other, and took a moment to let the red clear from my vision.

"I’ll do my best to think of Tom-Tom," I corrected myself.

"I suppose that’s all I can ask," my mother said, sounding very much like it wasn’t. "Say goodbye to your brother before you leave."

She turned back the way she had come, and vanished from sight. I had about half a second to breathe freely before Ty Lee attached herself to my side.

"Your mom’s the worst," she said, trying to find an area on my body she could rub comfortingly without grinding knife sheaths into my body. I moved out of her grasp before she could succeed, heading down the corridor to Tom-Tom’s room.

I knew from personal experience in who-gives-a-shit-ville and who-gives-slightly-more-shits-ville that she really wasn’t, but decided against telling Ty Lee that.

I pulled Tom-Tom’s door open, and was faced with his headache of room, filled with broken toys and fifteen different kinds of banners. His once-wet-nurse-and-now-nanny saw me, and "Don’t stand," I said, before she could.

"Mai!"

"Hi, Tom-Tom," I said, crouching down to his level as he came crawling and tumbling across the floor towards me. He reached out, and I pulled him into my arms.

"Mai!" he said again. "Up!"

I obligingly stood and lifted him into the air.

He giggled and flailed his arms. "Look, Mama!" he said to the woman who was not his mama. "I’m flying!"

Hiruko looked up at me when I glanced down at her.

"Yes, Tom-Tom," she said after a moment too long. "You’re flying."

Tom-Tom screamed out a giggle of delight, and I lowered him back to my chest.

He grabbed two big handfuls of my hair, and used them to leverage his face up to mine. He smiled, and giggled at me, and I smiled back at him.

I breathed in the that unique, slightly sour, Tom-Tom smell, and then breathed it out. I set him on the ground.

I stopped smiling at him, and he stopped smiling at me.

"I have to leave," I told him. "I don’t know when I’ll be back."

I stood, and Tom-Tom toppled onto his face without my hands to hold him up. He giggled for a moment, and then pushed himself so that he could look up at me.

"What?" he said.

"I love you, Tom-Tom," I said.

"Mai?"

I stood, and turned away before he could start to cry. Tom-Tom was a loud, messy crier.

"Mai!" there was a thump as he toppled onto his face, and I stepped out into the hallway. I turned back to his little red face, mouth opened in a wail, and closed the door just in time for his first wail.

Ty Lee shifted uncomfortably next to me.

Ty Lee didn’t say anything as we wound our way down the hall, past my parent’s quarters, my father’s drawing room, and my mother’s study. Ty Lee’s eyes darted to each of them as we passed, and she flinched with each of Tom-Tom’s wails.

Even as we descended the stone stairs whose height I hadn’t quite managed to get used to, we were still close enough to hear the words of Tom-Tom’s wails.

_ Mai, don’t go _ , Tom-Tom said.

_ Mai, where are you going?  _ Tom-Tom asked.

We were, however, far enough that Hiruko’s words were nothing more than a low, shushing murmur.

We reached the first story, just as the main door to the manor opened, and five particularly unhappy looking Earth Kingdom nobles. We both paused, for a second, as they looked at Ty Lee like a particularly disgusting piece of dogshit, and I tried and failed to place their faces.

"Lady Mai," the house servant who was standing before them said, folding himself rather neatly in half. "Lady Ty Lee," he continued as a sort of afterthought, to his knees.

"Hello, Yamaguchi," I said.

Yamaguchi, who had been in the process of straightening, bowed again at my acknowledgement.

Upstairs, Tom-Tom screamed, and Ty Lee winced.

The Earth Kingdom nobles flinched as Ty Lee and I passed them, and Tom-Tom’s voice became quieter, little by little, all the way down into a high whine by the time we reached the steel front doors my father had insisted we install in all of our manors.

I pushed them open, and the five square yards of shitsville, Earth Kingdom opened up before me.

The manor we had usurped was on a hill, on the North East side of town, so from our front door, you could see the entire village laid out before you, with the possible exception of one or two noble Manors hidden in the forests outside of town.

The city was too small to have districts, so it simply underwent a slow degradation from reasonable houses and shops to what were little more than stone huts, as you went out towards the sea.

At the end of the town's one road lay the comically small harbor, and in that harbor stood a massive black behemoth of a fire Nation Navy battleship.

The steel doors slammed shut behind us, and Tom Tom’s screams were abruptly silenced. Ty Lee jumped at the steel clang, and maybe also at the sudden absence of Tom-Tom’s screams.

Just to our right were a collection of servants of the nobles we had passed inside. My father had decided back in smaller-shitsville a nice way to demonstrate his power over the local nobility was to force them to meet with him alone, leading to long afternoons in which a group of increasingly uncomfortable servants milled about outside of our walls.

I had spent several afternoons watching them, simply for a change of pace of watching our own servants milling about inside the walls.

Their gazes snapped to us as soon as the doors opened, but most of them then immediately slipped away, in the way servants eyes generally slip away from people who are probably of a substantially higher station. It was an eerie sort of feeling, having people’s gaze slide over you like you weren’t there.

As we made our way past them, and down to the main gates of my family’s newest castle, Ty Lee almost managed to stay silent, but not quite.

"I can swallow swords now," Ty Lee said, as the guard’s pulled open the gates before us.

I blinked at the sudden change in topic as the guards dipped their heads to me. Ty Lee tossed my bag from her left hand to her right, and then heaved it up onto her shoulder.

"What?"

Instead of answering, Ty Lee reached out towards the hilt of my sword at the nape of my neck, and I pushed her hand away.

"I can swallow swords, now," Ty Lee repeated herself, wiggling her fingers at the guards, who just looked uncomfortably back at her. "Here, I can show—"

I brushed her hand away again, and she pouted at me instead of finishing her threat.

I tried to come up with the name of the master of the circus she’d been at, but couldn’t quite remember.

Kawasaki?

Kawada?

Kawa…

"Did Mr. Kawasaki teach you?" I asked, trying to deter her from putting anything I owned inside her mouth.

"Kowasaki."

Right, Kowasaki.

"He didn’t, he’s no good with sword swallowing," Ty Lee said, giving up on her quest to take one of my knifes and ingest it. "He actually wasn’t very good at anything…" she said, her voice drifting off as she stared off into space. "I guess he was good at running the circus?"

We reached the edge of the town, and although the road got more crowded, it didn’t get more crowded for us. People parted before our clothing of black and red, and eyes found other places to be.

"And also setting people’s rigging on fire," Ty Lee muttered after a moment.

If she noticed the parting green tide before us, she didn’t show it.

"Who was it, then?"

In the two months I had lived in the town, I had only been in the city twice. Once, on our second day here, to eat at a dinner hosted by a prominent member of some tradesman’s guild, and once, two days ago, when I came into the city alone to buy most of the knifecare supplies Ty Lee was currently carrying on her back.

I went through a bottle of oil every two months, and a honing stone every seven months. I could theoretically get it shipped from the Fire Nation, but I could also just steal something from my manor, and use that to buy it from the local metalworker.

I had gone after dark, in a set of green robes my mother had bought for me when we left the Fire Nation. She hadn’t ever replaced them, probably a little ashamed of the thought of giving her daughter a way to blend in with the natives, so they didn’t fit quite right anymore, but they fit well enough.

We passed the metalworking shop, the entire front wall opened up to the street, the air shimmering with heat as it billowed out of the doors. The man who had sold me a new honing stone and four bottles of oil looked up at me, and then looked away, his face empty of recognition.

"Kana," Ty Lee said, and it took me a moment to realize she was answering my question, and not talking to herself . "She was our acrobat. Or well, I guess she stopped being our acrobat once i joined, and her act started to be mostly things like sword swallowing? She was funny, though, she had this act—"

We were close enough to the harbor that i could see indistinct shapes on the ship, and one indistinct shape, separated from all the others. We were far enough from the castle that the people around us had nothing to lose from offending a fire nation citizen, and stopped parting.

"—hey, are you listening?"

"You stole Kana’s job, and then once she had her new job, she taught it to you so she could be sure you couldn't steal that from her, too." I sidestepped a middle aged man who seemed rather determined to walk into me. "It was easy, Kana can swallow a sword this long—” I held out my hands “―and now, so can you. How did she feel about the fact that it was so easy for you?”

Ty Lee gave me a perplexed look, like she didn’t understand the question. “She was happy!” Ty Lee lied. “And anyways, I could never be funny like Kana is. You should have―”

"You're late," fifteen-minutes-early-is-on-time-on-time-is-late Azula interrupted.

"Princess!" Ty Lee exclaimed, immediately forgetting me entirely and spinning around to grin up at where Azula was scowling down at me from where she stood, alone, on the ship's prow."Look at what I found!" She held up one of my knives above her head in both hands. I checked my sheathes, and found the sixth sheath on my left thigh empty.

Azula’s scowl softened as she turned her gaze to Ty Lee. "That's… great, Ty Lee. I'm happy for you."

Ty Lee grinned wide, took a running leap to the anchor of the ship, caught it with one hand, and then began heaving herself up it with one hand, my bag clenched in the other, and my knife in her teeth. It was exhausting just to watch.

I turned away, and back to the town that would have been my home, or something like it. It didn’t look much bigger from the harbor, although the angle suggested there was a possibility it had more than the three streets it did. It was dusty and brown, flecked occasionally with bright, rebellious green, and even more occasionally with my own dark, hateful red.

There was a small crowd at the end of the road, a sea of faces that I didn’t know and ran together because of it.

By the time I turned back, Ty Lee had finished climbing the ship, and was standing next to Azula, my bag nowhere to be seen, and my knife in the hand Ty Lee had thrown around Azula’s shoulders.

"Yeah, I’m not doing that," I informed the two of them as I made my way down the rickety stone pier to where the metal gangplank lay just a little off of perpendicular on the stone. There were long black scratches behind it, where it had been dragged along the pier.

I kicked it in a futile effort to make it look at least a little perpendicular, to no avail.

"You're no fun, Mai," Ty Lee yelled down at me, her right hand still loosely holding my knife about half a foot from Azula’s throat.

Azula tolerated it for about thirty seconds.

"Ty Lee," she said. "Give me that." She took the knife from Ty Lee’s hand, "Mai, keep better track of your toys," and then she threw the knife at me, end over end, a glittering little pinwheel of death.

I stopped, and watched it clatter across the gangplank and into the sea, instead of losing a finger trying to catch it.

"Thanks, Princess," I said, not quite able to drag my gaze away from my knife as it spun in the water, not sinking. A moment later, whatever had been holding it up vanished, and it sunk like the metal knife it was. "I’ll keep that in mind."

When I turned back to Azula, her expression was something that could have been mistaken for apologetic, had it been on a human face.

I reached the top of the gangplank, and approached Azula. My bag, I discovered, was upside down on her left foot, low enough it was invisible form the pier, and in imminent danger of being thrown off the ship.

"Hello again, Princess," I said.

"Hello again, Mai," Azula said, kicking my bag into my chest almost hard enough to knock me on my ass, instead of over the edge of the ship, for which I was eternally grateful. "It’s going to be such a relief having more than one competent human being on this ship." The closest soldier to us on the deck was the captain, and his lips thinned at the insult.

Azula turned to him, golden eyes flashing with challenge.

"Well?" she said. "What are you waiting for?"

He lowered his head in a jerky not-bow.

"Of course," he said. "As you wish." He turned away from Azula, and raised a hand. "Li, Chaolong, raise the anchor, Chen, Jian, go tell the men manning the boiler to get ready. I’ll turn the ship around."

Li is probably the second most common name in the Fire Nation, popular for boys and girls, if you want to name your child something that will ensure they never stand out or excel at anything they ever do. It was also the name of the youngest son of the noble family who lived in the manor next my family’s manor.

"Lady Mai," half of the Li and Chaolong group said to me with a nod as he passed, in a voice that hadn’t changed in the last four years.

"Private Li," I said, reading the bars on his shoulders.

He passed me without a second look, whatever expression he might have had hidden behind his mask, but my expression must have been less hidden because as soon as he passed me, an unpleasantly warm breeze blew past my face.

"You know one of the crew," Azula said, close enough I could see her from the corner of my eyes without actually turning from where Li was hauling up the anchor. She was smiling a wide, toothy smile, much like I imagine dragons smiled before they ripped you in half. "How  _ nice _ ."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I would like to apologize to anyone named Li. Your name is great, and you are also great.


	3. Book 0.5 - Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry this is late. I was gonna post it last weekend, but then I uhhh... didn't >.>
> 
> I'll follow this up with another chapter to make it up to you. :)

The wood under my feet groaned as the wind screamed across the water and the waves crashed over the bow. I closed my hands over the wooden railing to keep my balance as the wood grew slick with saltwater, and looked out at the horizon.

I could just barely see it, a dull grey line in the waning moonlight. Twenty days of groaning wood and salt on my lips, and I could see the end.

I could see it on the horizon, and I could see it in the sky. The five brightest stars in the sky in a jagged, broken line. Tonight, they would come into alignment.

We were supposed to have gotten here a week ago, but the gods and mortal stupidity had intervened. The old captain had already paid the price for our delay, and, with any luck, the gods would be paying the rest of the price tonight.

The boat was rocked with another wave, another gust of wind, and my right hand slid across the slick surface of the railing. The skin of my palm caught on a splinter and I jerked back from the railing just as another wave crashed into the bow, throwing me off balance, and almost throwing me to my knees.

I caught myself just in time, jamming my splintered palm back onto the railing, and dragging myself back to my feet.

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Toriko’s comfortingly familiar silhouette, black eyes shining out from the shadows of her hood in the moonlight.

"Is it that time again, Toriko?" I asked her, and she nodded, holding out a small vial in the palm of her hand.

I smiled—I couldn’t help it—and took the vial from her hand. I uncorked it, and took a moment a to breathe in the sweet stench of sensu venom.

I glanced back at the rapidly approaching grey line on the horizon. One last night. 

The ship rocked again, but I was prepared for it this time, saw the wave coming, and was able to plant my feet against the waves, the sensu venom sloshing up and over the rim. Some of it splashed onto my hand, spreading an uncomfortable warmness across my skin, stinging as it wormed its way around to where the splinter had embedded itself in my palm.

I recorked it, and made my way slowly to the stern of the boat. I opened the heavy door, and made my way down into the bowels of the ship. As I descended, the air grew thick with a clammy sort of humidity that wormed its way into my black robes, and stuck itself to my skin.

The walls, where I trailed my fingers along them, were just a little damp, the wood swollen, not quite even. At the bottom of the stairs was a door set in a bronze frame that pretended it was gold, lined in places with the off-green of bronze exposed to damp. The air around it stunk with a sour metal tang. I turned away from it, passed the room I had relocated the now dead captain to, and then Toriko’s room, and then her men’s room. I arrived at the door at the end of the hallway, and the two hooded shapes on either side of the door straightened.

The ship hadn’t had a brig when we had acquired it, but we made do. I opened the door.

"Hello, Azula," I said, and I smiled at the fear and hate in her golden eyes.   
  



	4. Book 0.5 - Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I posted two chapters today, so there's another chapter before this one, if you're coming here from a chapter notification email.

I opened my eyes.

There was a moment in which I had no idea where I was. I panicked as I blinked against the darkness, trying to see something—

And then I remembered.

I was three days into a glorious and very exciting adventure with Azula, somewhere in the sea off the coast of the Earth Kingdom.

I blinked against the darkness once more, but it stubbornly refused to resolve itself into shapes. It was something I hadn’t quite gotten used to—the sort of darkness you could only get when you were shut up in a metal box.

I sat up, and then pushed myself to my feet. I tiptoed forwards, towards where I was pretty sure the door was, my hands held out in front of me, taking shuffling steps.

One shuffling step, two shuffling steps, three shuffling steps—I ignored that stiff feeling of what was definitely not panic in the back of my throat.

My steps quickened, less shuffling, and I immediately stubbed my toe against the edge of the doorframe.

I did my best to keep my agony silent, not to wake Azula, where she lay sleeping somewhere behind me, because why would be sleeping separately in a ship that could house hundreds?

After I got a handle on myself, I straightened, and reached out blindly in front of me, finding the door somewhere off to my right. I had turned just a little in my panicked shuffling steps towards the door, so I was facing the left edge of the doorframe, just a little off of the perpendicular.

I re-aligned myself, shuffled along the wall, and then swung the door open. I stepped through as quickly as I could, closing the door as silently as I could behind me. 

I had to close my eyes against the brilliance of the hallway, leaning back against the door. I was tired, and my eyelids were heavy, urging me to just lean back, and let my tiredness take me.

I pushed myself back up, and squinted against the light. It was a little more bearable now, less like staring into the sun, and more like starting into a reflection of the sun off of unnecessarily shiny stone floors, which, as we all know, definitely doesn’t still burn little white holes in your vision.

I passed door after door of crew quarters, no different from the quarters I had left, one, two, three, five, seven—I was in a fire Nation battleship, a ship so large it had other, smaller ships inside of it—nine, thirteen.

I reached the stairs after I hit fifteen pairs of doors, and started the long climb back up to the deck. The quality of the light in the stairway faded from red, to orange, to white. I stepped out into the muggy night air, and took a deep breath in. It almost choked me, thick enough i was sure i could cut it with a knife, somehow even thicker than it had been below decks.

I grew up in the fire nation, though, so it was nothing I hadn't experienced every day of my hellish childhood. I made my way across the empty deck, between two massive catapults, which cut disjointed, incomprehensible figures in the moonlight, and to the railing of the ship. When my right hand touched the railing of the ship, i preemptively flinched, but when i raised my hand to my face, my palm was clear, aside from its standard smattering of scars.

I had forgotten my gloves in my room, I realized a little after the fact. I didn't even remember taking them off—I didn't, normally.

The wind felt… peculiar, against the bare skin of my palm, intermittently numb and sharply cold as it blew over the fine white lines criss-crossing my hands, moving from area with no sensation to areas with altogether too much.

I didn't like it. I hadn't been without my gloves outside since…

I didn't even know when.

I shoved my hands into the cavernous pockets of my sleeping robe, and I felt a little bit better.

Before me, the sea was an endless, roiling plane of pitch, with a single white stain, tracking from somewhere off to my left, and continuing most of the way to the horizon.

It was an unpleasant sight, but i didn't turn my gaze away.

Behind me, I heard the door open with a sucking whoosh, and I turned back to see a masked soldier step out from the stairwell, and then close the door behind them. I recognized his broad shoulders and straight back.

Before he turned towards me, I already knew he was.

“Lady Mai,” Li said in his soft, deep voice.

“Private,” I responded.

And I had done such a good job of avoiding him for the last three days. It was really easy―just never leave your room.

I turned back to the roiling plane of pitch that was pretending to be the sea, and there was silence behind me. Silence, and silence, and then a tap, tap, tap in a familiar rhythm behind me before Li's figure appeared to my left, large and looming, big enough to block out the moon behind him.

He had been so much taller than me when I had been younger, tall enough he could function as my own personal jungle gym, and part of me had expected him to be shorter than me now.

He wasn't.

He took off his mask, and then he took off his helmet. Against Fire Nation military regulations, but who was counting?

He looked older, now. When i left, he was twenty-four and now he was twenty-seven. I wouldn’t have thought that would have made a difference, but I was wrong.

The lines around his mouth and his eyes had deepened.

I had expected his face to be harder, with deeper frown lines, but it wasn't. He had smile lines in the corners of eyes instead. He smiled, and they folded their way back to his ears.

"I love weather like this," he said, breathing in the soup that was the air around us with a happy sigh.

Firebenders are crazy.

"I don't," I told him, and he laughed. He laughed a long, booming laugh, echoing across the deck and back off the command tower.

It took him a moment, but he stopped laughing, his head bowed down to the railing of the ship. He glanced at me out of the corner of his eye, still smiling.

"It's so nice to see you again, Lady Mai," he said. "I missed you."

His eyes, as he said it, flickered from my face down to my hands, which had made their way out of my pockets and back onto the railing, and his smile faltered.

I closed my hands tighter against the railing, and didn't hide them back in my pockets.

I had bought my gloves because of him. Because of the way he had looked at the scars on my hands. I itched to hide them back in my pockets, but I resisted the urge, and he turned his gaze back up to my face, smiling again, and then lifted his face to stare out towards the sea.

Still smiling, just a little.

"It's nice to see you, too, Private," I said, automatically.  _ I missed you, too,  _ I didn't say.

Lady Mai, he had called me, long before anyone else had, when I was four years old, and tripping over my own feet.

He was a member of the Feng noble house. It was a smaller house than mine, which was something of an accomplishment. I knew now he had called me Lady Mai because he had had to, just like my servants had to call me “young mistress Mai”, but he had a nobility about him when he said it that made me feel like a real Lady. Like a grown woman.

I had sought him out, just to hear him say it, walking into his family's manor, barging into his room to receive my daily Lady Mai, before rushing back to my own manor, to do whatever needed to be done for the day.

Big and tall and so noble, when I stood next to him in my tiny formal robes, I could see our future together, because I didn’t understand his station, and how impossible it all was.

It seemed I always made the same mistake. First Li, and then―

And then Zuko.

"How was Ningde?"

"Boring," I said. "How was Caldera?"

"Not the same without you," he said, and my heart twisted into a knot in my chest. He laughed, because it was a joke, and then continued. "I left, not long after you, and joined the Navy."

"I noticed."

Another huff of a laugh. "I'm doing well for myself," he said. "Moving up in the world. If I'm lucky, I'll be heading a division in a year or so, have my own ship in two or three more."

He was a noble, before I left. He was not moving up in the world. He was crawling out of the hole he had been dropped into.

He still had that noble bearing, that same effortless nobility that had so enamored me as a child. Lord Li, I had called him, not just out of reciprocity but because he had also looked the part.

But now he was just a Private.

He would move up in the world, and then he would just be a captain, a commander, an admiral.

He turned to me, met my gaze, and he smiled. He smiled with his whole face, open and happy. 

It wasn't a noble’s smile, too genuine and full of emotion, and I turned away.

"I'm happy for you," I lied.

He laughed. There was a bit more clanging behind me, and when i turned back to him, he was leaning back against the railing, starting up at the night sky. He was framed by the moon in the horizon behind him, making him glow like some sort of otherworldly spirit.

"Don't you have work to be doing?"

He smiled his Noble smile, glancing at me out of the corner of his eye. "Am I bothering you, Lady Mai?"

"Yes."

He barked another laugh out into the night sky.

"Alright, alright," he said. He leaned down, bending down to pick up his mask and helmet while I definitely didn’t stare at his—

He straightened, and placed his helmet on his head, and then slid his mask over his face with a click.

But he didn't leave. Instead, he turned towards me, and crouched down onto his haunches, the way he had when he had talked to me when I was young and tiny.

He had still towered over me, crouched like this, but at least now he didn’t. Now he had to look up at me, and it didn’t even look like he minded.

"I know you're no longer a child," he said, voice muffled by his mask. "But if something happens, I'm still here for you." 

He held a bare hand out to me, palm up, and I placed my hand in it. 

"You're not alone," he said, and he squeezed my hand tightly. Too tightly, hard enough I had to swallow a wince. He released it. "You're not alone," he repeated.

Then he left. He walked down to the prow, did whatever it was he was supposed to have done fifteen minutes ago, then walked back to the door to the central tower, bowing his head to me before vanishing into the tower.

I turned away from the tower, back to the sea. I raised my hands to my face, and they came away wet. Sticky, hot tears to match the sticky, hot air.

"Fuck," I said, and clenched my eyes closed as my knees banged painfully into the steel port beneath my feet.

"Fuck.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter and the one before it are a little on the short side—sorry about that. The next one's a juicy one, though: like 7,500 words (also, things happen in it!). I should, like, probably try and chop them up into equal pieces or something but haha no. Sometime next weekend, though, I promise.


	5. Book 0.5 - Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Featuring a "dog".
> 
> I had a lot of fun writing the "dog".
> 
> :)
> 
> (It actually features more than one "dog". I had more fun writing one of them than the others, though.)

"You're up early,"Azula greeted me at sunrise.

"It's involuntary, I assure you."

There was a long pause in which Azula tried to internally simulate human emotion. She eventually settled on "Okay."

I answered with a similarly long pause, naively assuming that Azula was going to more accurately simulate human behavior.

Finally, I gave up, and asked, "Is Ty Lee awake?"

Azula made an angry noise.

"No. She refuses to get up before noon. It's embarrassing." Azula came to stand with me at the railing. "When she gets old, she's gonna get fat," Azula said venomously, in the way she said almost everything she said. When i didn't respond suitably quickly, she scowled. "Because she's so _ lazy _. Keep up, Mai."

"My mistake, Princess," I said automatically. "I also hope Ty Lee’s laziness makes her fat," I continued, still on autopilot, showing my continued disregard for my own life.

Azula gave me a solid thirty seconds to ponder my upcoming death before answering.

"I'm glad we agree," she said. She then leaned out, over the railing and squinted at the horizon. She looked over at the sun, then pulled a small timepiece from a pants pocket, and smiled.

"We're making better time than I expected,"she said, pocketing the watch once again. 

“Joy,” I said, continuing my disregard of my own life. A complete and utter lack of sleep was making me stupid.

Azula waited for some deeper, more complex response for a long ten, twenty seconds before she remembered she didn’t actually care about what I thought and turned away. I continued staring out at the roiling surface of the ocean which thankfully no longer looked like boiling pitch, but instead looked like particularly weak tea that been steeped for too long (which would explain the fact that it felt like we were in a literal sauna). Behind me, I heard Azula's boots click, click, click as she pranced away. I’d spent altogether too much time in her presence in the last seventy two hours, so the image of her shaking her butt as she pranced away came to my mind, unbidden.

I sighed, blinking my heavy eyelids, and wondered if I fell asleep here, if I would tumble back onto the deck or down into the boiling ocean below. At the thought, I leaned forward, just to be sure.

In Caldera, there was one bridge which everyone called the lovers’ bridge, because couples who weren’t allowed to be together liked to jump off of it and kill themselves. It had been Azula's favorite bridge, and, as I learned over the side of the ship, fantasizing about falling asleep and falling down, down, down into the boiling ocean, I remembered the one time she had taken us there and we arrived just in time to watch a noble boy and his packing-district girlfriend jump off the side, and fall to the water with a crack. They hadn’t screamed, but I had, when Azula swam out into the river, and dragged their broken bodies back onto the shower, limbs twisted and broken, heads split.

I leaned back, moving my center of gravity back onto the ship, mostly back to my senses. I rubbed my hands over my face in a futile effort to rub the fatigue away.

It stubbornly remained, like the creeping mold that had slowly overtaken my bathroom in the smaller-shitsville, before we moved. No matter how much the servants scrubbed, it just kept growing, and growing, and―

I jerked awake as my tailbone made painful contact with the ground. I blinked up at the blinding white circle of the sun, trying to place myself, when a pale face intervened between me and the sun.

“You’re useless like this,” Azula said, doing her best imitation of human emotion. “Go take a nap.”

“I thought―” I paused, my thoughts escaping me. “I thought that would make me fat.”

Azula blinked at me, and it was only then that I woke back up properly.

I closed my eyes against my own impending death by stupidity, and Azula grabbed me by armpits and hauled me to my feet.

“I don’t care if you’re fat,” Azula said, setting me on my feet, and then physically turning me around. I opened my eyes to the massive fin that stuck out of the center of the deck. “We won’t arrive on the Last Island until at least noon. Go sleep.”

I processed her words in reverse order, my mind like sludge once again. I turned back to Azula. “I—"

She shoved me before I could get the words out, sending me stumbling into a broad red chest. “I’ll take her downstairs, princesses,” the broad red chest said.

I blinked, and the light around me was orange, not white. In front of my face was a bone white mask.

“Are you―are you carrying me?”

“I would never,” Li responded.

Another blink, and the light around me was a darker red. I reached out, and was only just awake enough to stop myself from catching Li's sleeve like a child. He caught my hand anyways, the hand that was still ungloved―where were my gloves?―and moved it back over me to set it on my chest.

His mask was gone, and he was smiling underneath it. “I told you I was here for you,” he said, smiling as he released my hand.

Beneath his arm was a white little sliver of bone, and I was momentarily very concerned. “What happened to your arm,” i said, reaching out towards it, only to be met with his hand once again.

“It's just my mask,” Lord Li responded, and sliver of bone transformed itself into a mask as he slid it over his face.

“Lord Li,” I said. “Why do you have a mask?” I tried to keep my eyes open, but couldn’t quite succeed. “You’re not a―”

“What are you doing asleep?”

I jerked awake, and stared up at Ty Lee's smiling face. 

“You’re never asleep this late,” she continued, smooshing her face closer to mine.

I groaned. “Ty Lee, why did you wake me up?”

“Uhhh,” Ty Lee said eloquently. Eyes darting back and forth as she tried to think of an excuse beyond _ I have literally never thought of another human being’s feelings in my entire life. _ “Azula told me to!”

I closed my eyes, and pushed her face away.

“Azula told me that you’re gonna get fat,” I said, rolling away from her. “Because you’re so lazy.”

Ty Lee made a hurt noise, much like the noise baby robinhawks make when they wake you up at five in the morning, before you engage in some recreational robinhawk genocide.

“No, I didn’t,” said a new voice, coming from what was probably the doorway. My eyes opened automatically, and I rolled to face Azula.

Her face was perfectly calm, despite her blatant lie. When Ty Lee spun back from her with a pout, she glared at me.

Slowly and probably because of imminent threat of death, I started to remember what had happened as I had succumbed to my own sleep deprivation. I closed my eyes to the perfectly made up face of my impending death, because I wanted it to happen quickly, before everything came back to me.

No such luck.

“Wake up, Mai,” Azula said, every word like a stiletto in my eyes. I opened my eyes, and she looked perfectly calm, much like all predatory catbears look before they strike. “Are you less stupid now?”

Ty Lee's face appeared next to hers.

“Mai was stupid?”

“Intensely so. Shall I do an imitation?” Without waiting for a response, because ninety percent of Azula's questions are secretly rhetorical, Azula cleared her throat, held four dangerously pointed nails to her chest―

“Yes, Princess,” I interrupted her. “I am less stupid now.” I sat up, and Azula smiles an unpleasant smile.

“Fantastic.”

Then, holding eye contact with me, she raised this four knife nails to her chest again―and said, in whiny, high-pitched voice, “Lord Li, why do you have a mask? I thought―”

The rest of her words were drowned out by the rushing of blood in my ears. I turned away from Azula, but the sharpness of her laugh cut through the rushing that had so gratefully drowned out the rest of her words.

“What’s wrong, Ty Lee?” Azula asked, after she was done laughing. “It’s funny, laugh.”

I closed my eyes once, took a single breath, and—

“I don’t know, Princess. I don’t think that’s very funny.”

I looked up at Ty Lee, who was looking down at the ground worth a frown, and the frozen smile on Azula's face.

The seconds ticked by in frozen silence.

Azula looked between us for a moment, and the sneered. “It’s a shame I never knew about this little crush of yours when we were younger, Mai. Think of all the fun we could have―”

“Princess!” Ty Lee interrupted spinning to face Azula, and grab her by the arms. “Why are you being like this?” She shook Azula, hard enough to knock her perfect bangs out of alignment, one got caught behind her ear, the other stuck between her eyebrows.

Ty Lee, I remembered belatedly, had said no to Azula, when she had come to fetch her.

Who wouldn’t have taken away Ty Lee's safety net, when asked by the princess of the fire nation? I had thought no one would, but I realized then that the correct answer to that question was:

Ty Lee wouldn’t have. If it had been someone else, Ty Lee wouldn’t have.

Azula's sneer froze, her face as cold as ice as her gaze snapped from me back to Ty Lee. Thirty seconds passed as I realized I was in my pajamas, with all my knives still in their sheaths at the end of my bed, and Azula took three deep breaths as she tried to burn a hole through Ty Lee with her eyes.

Azula moved, and I stood, as useless as I was, but instead of attacking, she simply raised her hands to Ty Lee's on her shoulders, and brushed them off.

“We’ve arrived at the Last Island,” she said, her voice ice cold. “Be on the deck and ready to leave in ten minutes.”

Then she turned, and walked out of the room, her butt traveling in a straight line instead of its usual prancing squiggle, slamming the door shut behind her, encasing us in darkness.

Ty Lee laughed a high, uncomfortable laugh, and two hands groped me no less than five times as she wormed her arms around me and pulled me close to her chest.

“Geez, Azula sure can be a jerk sometimes,” she said, voice shaking, holding me tightly. She fumbled through the tangled mass of my hair before starting to pet it. “I’m sorry she said those things to you.” The shaking in her hands and her voice cleared, “that wasn’t right.”

“It was nothing,” I said into the darkness, my hands set somewhere that was probably on her hips but in the darkness, who knows?

Ty Lee untangled herself from me, and then fumbled with my face for a moment before conking our foreheads together.

“It wasn’t.”

_ It wasn’t. _

Behold, literally-has-never-thought-of-a-person-besides-herself Ty Lee.

I remained silent, and Ty Lee eventually released my face, tottering away in the darkness. I readied myself to squint against the light as Ty Lee threw the door back open, but she didn’t.

"Mai," she finally said, from somewhere an awful lot closer than I had last heard her tottering footsteps.

"Ty Lee."

"When we were still at the palace, I did it, too, didn’t I?" Her voice grew and fell as she spoke, like she was walking silent circles somewhere in front of me. "I cheered her on, and I laughed at you." I didn’t answer, so she continued. "Like when she got—"

"You don’t need to remind me." I remembered just fine.

Two stuttered footsteps answered me, somewhere off to my left, before Ty Lee spoke again, somewhere off to my right.

"Right." A pause. "Right. Well, that wasn’t right either."

"Nobody would have done anything different."

"You did," Ty Lee said, suddenly right in front of me, close enough I could feel the breath of her words on my face. "You didn’t laugh at me when Azula made me cry, but I laughed when she made you cry."

I opened my mouth to respond, but found no words to say.

_ Azula always liked you better _ , I almost said. _ It was no contest. _

"I’m sorry."

Silence stretched between us, for one hot Ty Lee breath on my face, two, three. By the time I had arranged my thoughts into _ It’s okay _, the Ty Lee breath on my face was gone, and Ty Lee was yelling from somewhere in the middle of the room.

“Gosh, it’s so dark in here,” she said, like nothing had just happened. “If only we were firebenders!” she gave out an awkward little giggle as she opened the door Azula had slammed closed.

The red light rushed in, and I didn’t even really need to squint against it. Ty Lee smiled sunnily at me from the doorway.

“If only,” I agreed, and she giggled some more.

A pair of soldiers passed in front of our room, but they both kept their gazes resolutely forward, which seemed like a good plan not to get murdered by the very private crown princess of the fire nation that generally inhabited this room.

Ty Lee moved back into the room, and started spraying clothing across the floor as she looked for her non-pajama clothes. She wiggled as she did it, because if literally every part of her body wasn’t moving at all times, she would die. It was a curse, being Ty Lee.

It was only when she moved to strip off her pajama shirt that I interrupted her.

“Ty Lee.”

“What?” she said, face muffled by the shirt that was currently wrapped around her face.

I sighed.

“Learn some shame,” I said, walking around her and into the hallway.

Ty Lee made a farting noise, which was not at all muffled by her shirt, which made a soft sort snuffling sound as it hit the steel floor.

“We did this all the time in the circus!” she yelled at my back. “Didn’t you have servants dress you?”

I didn’t. I grabbed a torch from the wall before me, and returned to our room, closing the door begin me.

“Also!” Ty Lee shouted at me, despite the fact I was two feet away from her face. “Soldiers also do this all the time!”

She spread her hands wide in either side of her, presumably to demonstrate just how all the time soldiers change with their doors open in fire navy battleships.

“I feel like you’re missing an important distinction here, Ty Lee.”

I walked to the wall to the right of the door, pulled the unlit torch out of its mount, and replaced it with the lit torch.

Ty Lee snorted a real snotty, nasty snort. Instead of thinking any more than I had to about Ty Lee's bodily fluids, I looked down at unlit torch in my hand instead.

“The Home Guard has men and women in the same barracks!”

I kicked one of Ty Lee's roughly infinite articles of clothing away, and set the unlit torch on the ground in its place. It rolled a bit away from the wall, so I kicked it back into the wall.

It slammed into the wall with a painfully loud clang, and then rolled back to me, further from the wall than it had started.

I considering kicking it again, but decided against it. I turned back to Ty Lee's incredibly smug face.

“Ty Lee, put some clothes on.”

“Not until you admit I’m right!”

“Oh no, whatever will I do.”

I walked around her, dodging her attempts to shoulder check me as I passed. I crouched down to unfold my pants, shirt, and vest on my bedroll as Ty Lee literally breathed down my neck, occasionally releasing tiny little spit droplets that splattered against the back of my neck.

“Admit ittt,” she sprayed across my neck.

I ignored her, and stowed away my shift and underwear in a small pouch for dirty clothes before drawing a clean ones from my bag.

“Fine!” Ty Lee said, unattaching herself from my neck. She stomped over to the door, and there was click as it unlatched itself.

“Ty Lee,” I said as I laid out my sheathes next. “Please, don’t.”

There was a pause, and the door clicked back closed.

“Fine!” she shouted. “But I’m still right!”

“Uh-huh.”

“You’re the one who's being weird!”

“Right.”

Ty Lee made a fart noise against my hair, then gave me a quick, tight hug, smearing her sweaty body against the back of my loose sleeping robe, then stomped back over to her bedroll.

“Have you considered taking a shower?”

“I took one the first night we were here!”

Ah, yes. 

Ty Lee is gross.

My mistake.

I got dressed, fixed my hair, and by the time I turned around, Ty Lee had finished dressing and been left along for long enough she was playing with herself―laying in the ground, chin propped up on her fists, and kicking herself in the top of the head.

I grimaced, and she giggled.

I guess I should be grateful that she hadn’t been bored long enough she started playing with me.

“You should stretch, then you could do this too!”

“I think I can just barely survive.”

Ty Lee pouted at me for a half a breath until she flipped herself back up into her feet in a dizzying single motion and threw the door open with a slam.

I swapped the torches back once more―our unlit torch and managed to roll itself all the way around until it was flush with the wall in the other direction, and we made our way up to the deck.

We were already landed, the battleship driven improbably far up onto the beach in the way Fire Nation crafts were built to do in unfriendly territory, its enormous prow lowered and long enough its tip almost touched the poisonously green tangle of ferns and Agni-knows-what-else that lay on the other side of the beach. Beside the massive shape of the prow, a camp had already begun to take shape, the maskless figure of the Captain clear even at this distance.

"Welcome back," Azula said, voice cold, distracting me from further musings on the bright green hell I suspected I would soon be thrust into. Ty Lee was, of course, already gone from beside me, and instead standing on the railing, arms spread wide, making a bizarre sort of noise I decided against trying to translate.

Azula's bitterly cold gaze bore into me, and I prepared myself for whatever vitriol she had spent the last ten minutes preparing, but seconds turned to minutes, and nothing came.

"Yes," she said instead, turning away from me and walking up to where Ty Lee was now balancing particularly precariously on her tiptoes on the railing. 

"Good to be back, Princess," Ty Lee said, not looking away from the jungle before her. "But more importantly, what is this!” Ty Lee cried, as I made my way to her other side.

“This is the Last Island,” Azula said, sounding a little smug.

“It’s amazing!" Ty Lee said, jumping up and clapping. "What’s that?"

"It’s the island where Uncle claims he killed the last dragon."

"Is that why it’s called The Last Island?"

"Yes."

"That’s stupid."

I glanced left, and watched Azula struggle with her urge to push Ty Lee to her death, before turning back to the beach stretched out before me. The sand glittered like broken glass, and the heat made the jungle shimmer and undulate like it had a mind of its own.

"Why are we here?" Ty Lee asked, falling in a terrifying blur down into a sitting position, kicking her feet out into the air before her.

"Well, Uncle’s known for being weak and stupid, so Dad sent me to check to see if he really did the job," Azula said. "If he didn’t, then Dad will charge him with treason, and we’ll all get to watch Dad set him on fire."

Ty Lee made a contemplative noise.

"Okay!" she said, flailing her legs one last time, then planting them on the bars, and flinging herself off of the ship.

For a moment my heart stopped, and I reached out for her despite myself, my hand curling around nothing but air. Thankfully, my shout of surprise and fear was drowned out by Ty Lee’s much louder happy scream as she fell, and fell, and fell, and then crashed into the ground in a puff of sand that could, conceivably, have hidden her bloody remains. About twenty feet away from her, the captain of the ship and about thirty or so of the other masked soldiers who were constructing a camp stared at the plume of sand in abject horror. Fortunately, Ty Lee straightened out of the sand plume, and struck a pose, probably smiling, although I couldn’t be sure at the distance.

Neither Azula nor I reacted, so she did a little anticipatory wiggle, letting us know what was expected of us.

I clapped.

Azula didn’t.

Ty Lee gave us a happy wiggle that was probably accompanied by a giggle I couldn’t hear, and stopped posing.

Despite myself, I found myself looking up to the undulating green mass that was the jungle before us, and thought of the man who could, conceivably, be blamed for my presence here.

"You know," I said, finally ripping my gaze from its hypnotic gaze to Azula, who was in the process of climbing up onto the railing, never one to let the fact something was stupid stop her from proving she could do it, "I never liked Iroh."

She smiled the smile i assume all nine-year-old girls smile when their fathers set their older brother’s faces on fire, and responded, "I'm glad we agree," before flinging herself off of the ship’s railing to Ty Lee's excited screaming.

I watched her fall for long enough to wonder what Ozai would do to me if he found out I allowed his daughter to commit suicide by stupidity, but thankfully, Azula safely crashed into the sand below me before I could get past him setting my family on fire and ripping out more than five my fingernails.

Ty Lee clapped, and when Azula turned to face me, haughty expectation clear despite being not much more than a black oval with a white tip.

I clapped.

I continued clapping until the black oval that was Azula stopped exuding her "praise-me" aura, and started exuding her "what-are-you-waiting-for" aura.

“Yeah,” I said, shaking my head. “I’m not doing that.”

Thankfully, I was much too far away from the for them to hear me, or for me to read whatever emotion Azula was currently doing her best to simulate on her face.

I turned away from them, up to the worst jungle in the Fire Nation, then over to where the soldiers who had watched the crown princess of the fire nation throw herself off he side of a fire nation battleship milled about uncomfortably. I weighed my options, and then I decided I ultimately had better things to die for than not getting my hair muddy and sweaty and waspquito ridden from climbing through what I was now about ninety percent sure was the worst jungle in the Fire Nation.

I wound my way through the soldiers who were only very slowly organizing themselves back into whatever it was they were doing before they were interrupted by Azula’s attempted suicide, and then down a set of narrow stairs that took me down into the bowls of the shop the prow-turned-gangplank now connected to the beach. 

I, of course, arrived just in time for an entire squad of faceless soldiers pass in front of me carrying what looked an awful lot like a massive banquet table down the prow, their boots marching in time hard enough to shake the metal beneath my feet.

The third soldier to pass me had a very familiar set of soldiers, but if Li noticed me, he didn’t say anything.

One-two one-two they went, at roughly an inch an hour, so I had a good long time to stare like an imbecile after Li’s back, one-two’ing and one-two’ing further down the prow, until I blinked, and I lost him among the twenty-thousand long line of identical uniforms.

After what I estimated to be about a thousand years, the last of the soldiers passed me, followed by a man with a lieutenant’s bars, who started turning towards me barked, "Recruit, what—", before finishing turning to me, and clicking his mouth closed, flinching away from me so hard he stumbled as he bent himself in half.

"Lady Mai," he said. "I apologize."

I counted out five seconds against my thigh, and then responded.

"Apology accepted." One two three four five. "Please, Lieutenant." I gestured for him to follow his men, with a gloved hand that his mask followed as it moved.

He unbent himself and I could imagine his facial expression without needing to see it through the mask, lips pinched, cheeks pale and pupils wide. He turned in fits and starts, and then started after his men walking in that way that people walk when they walk in front of nobles—like they want to look behind them, but know they can’t.

I tolerated it long enough for us to emerge from the belly of the battleship, and then glanced over the curved edge of the prow and tossed myself over it.

It was about a two story fall, compared to the five stories it had been from the railing of the ship, which was just long enough for me to regret my life choices before I crashed into the ground.

The window in my room in my people-give-zero-fucksville, Earth Kingdom had been on the third floor, and I made that jump every time I wanted to sneak out of my room at night, which meant I had made it every night. Unfortunately, the ground beneath that window was stone, and the ground that rushed up to meet me was sand.

Sand can go die in a fire. I landed in a puff of sand, perfectly fine, and then the sand gave out under my right leg, and I was sent face first into the beach.

"See!" Ty Lee said, suddenly above me, and pulling me from the sand. "You can do it!"

In the fall, the sand had managed to infiltrate its way into and under all three layers of my clothing, giving me a nice, three dimensional experience of having sand everywhere it shouldn’t be every time I moved anything.

"Thanks, Ty Lee," I said, removing her hands from my shoulders and experimenting with the motions I could make without being reminded of my unfortunate sanded state. The results were not encouraging. Azula came up behind her, whatever bad mood she may or may not have been in wiped away by the simple joy of watching someone getting a faceful of sand.

She clapped.

"As elegant as always, Mai," Azula said, smirking.

"You honor me, Princess."

Azula gave a squeaky snort of a laugh, cleared her throat, and then brushed off of non-existent grains of sand from her hatefully clean shirt.

Ty Lee, a bit late to the party, started clapping around the time Azula stopped, and turned back to the camp jerking her shoulder for us to follow.

"So Azula," Ty Lee said, after she’d endured following Azula in silence for her maximum attention span of twenty seconds, "what are we looking for?"

"We’re going to start by looking for the dragon Uncle claims he killed," Azula said, stepping up to the only fully constructed black tent on the beach, and throwing the soldier unfortunate enough to have been standing in front of the entrance out of the way. "And then we’ll kill it, of course."

Ty Lee made a booing noise as I glanced over at the soldier sprawled in the sand to my right who’d been thrown hard enough he had left a long trail in the sand almost the width of the tent, and felt an intense wave of hatred for him as looking at him reminded me of the sand that had been slowly working itself my armpits. It took all of the decorum my mother had hammered into my skull to keep me from either scratching at it, or, in an alternative that seemed better the longer I looked at the white mask of the soldier before me, ripping all of my clothes off and running naked naked into the ocean.

"What a waste,"Ty Lee said, "You should—" there was a moment of silence on the other side of the fabric before it was followed with a squal. "Oh my gosh is that Fluffles?" Another squeal. "Fluffles!"

When I ducked into the tent, I was treated to the sight of Ty Lee midjump towards a mongoose lizard with a bright pink bow around its neck.

Azula turned to face me, and smiled and unpleasant smile. "Don’t worry, Mai," she said. "I brought Aliko, too."

I sighed, and then turned to the third and smallest of the mongoose lizards in the tent, who turned to me in turn, and then gave its right eye a nice, long, lick.

"I had been hoping she’d died," I said, not thinking about how clever I thought I’d been with the name "Aliko".

"Don’t worry, Mai," Azula said as Aliko licked her other eye anticipatorily as I sidled up to her, holding an empty hand out to her, palm down. "I would never let your beloved Aliko die. Didn't you know that mongoose lizards can live for up to a hundred years? Even grandpa only ever had one."

I could hear the gleeful smile in her voice, and swallowed a groan as Aliko dropped her head to the back of my hand, the entire front half of her face vibrating as she huffed in my scent.

Children shouldn’t be allowed to name things.

"Hi, Aliko," I said, placing a hand on her neck. "Why couldn't you have just died?"

In response, Aliko raised her head up to my face and screeched at me. I was given a good look at the nightmare of teeth that is the inside of a mongoose lizard’s mouth as she sprayed me with spit. Her tongue slithered out of her mouth, but I slapped it away before she could try and lick me.

"No, bad girl," I scolded, and she settled for licking her right eye again.

"Oh, does that mean that yours is still The Blue Death?" Ty Lee asked as I looked helplessly at the hand I had sacrificed for my face, which was already losing feeling by the wonders of the mongoose lizard’s mildly paralytic spit.

"Yes," Azula said, sounding about as pleased about her childhood self’s naming sense as I was.

Slapping Aliko’s face away as she twisted back to lick me again, I dug through her saddle bags for the ever present spit rag that existed because mongoose lizards are second in excretion of bodily fluids only to Ty Lee. Once I had my hand clean, and Aliko fended off for the thirteenth time, I allowed myself a moment to mourn what this saddle was going to do to the lower half of my body for however long Azula decided to take to prove Iroh’s guilt.

I got on Aliko, working the sand under my robes deep into my thighs as I did it. After I once again resisted the urge to set my clothes on fire, a masked soldier dutifully untied Aliko from her pole without needing to me ask.

Aliko took advantage of my distraction as we pushed our way out of the much larger side door to arc her neck back to me and give my face a nice long lick, from jawline to hairline, right over my right eye.

“Thanks, Aliko,” I said pushing her head back forwards, groping blindly for the spit rag that was of course in the right saddlebag.

Before I could finish, Azula sent Blue Death into a rolling gallop, sending us rocketing into the jungle. By the time I could see out of my right eye again, the beach was only the barest hint of light behind me, the sand in my sleeves had worked its way under my robes, and Ty Lee was looking back at me, smiling.

"You look great," she lied with a straight face, not looking where Fluffles was dashing, the reins she was supposed to be holding hanging loosely on either side of her saddle.

I don’t know why they bothered to give her any at all—I’d never seen Ty Lee use them.

"Thanks, Ty Lee."

I ducked under a branch that Ty Lee had not had to duck under because Fluffles didn’t try to run her into trees.

"Aliko," I scolded, and received a unrepentant screech in response. Fluffles dashed over a fallen trunk, while I, of course, had to flatten myself to Aliko’s back to keep from taking it to the chest.

I ignored Ty Lee’s giggles, and focused instead on staying alive as Aliko played her fun game of "hit Mai with the jungle". I was happy to see that she hadn’t grown out of it.

I’d been worried.

The jungle was just as horrendous as I'd expected. The trees above us were not quite thick enough to block the heat of the sun, and just thick enough to make it dark enough you had to squint to see. I was the only one who had to worry, of course, because The Blue Death and Fluffles were good mongoose lizards who didn't try and kill their beloved riders.

"Princess!" Ty Lee shouted, requisite twenty seconds of silence apparently over.

I flattened against Aliko's back as she jumped to scrape me off against yet another branch.

"You're the worst," I whispered into Aliko's neck. "I hate you."

Aliko brayed happily, and licked her face.

"I know you can hear me!" Ty Lee continued, still shouting. "Don't pretend you can't!" As Azula considered continuing to ignore her, Ty Lee stood on Fluffles back. "I will jump onto The Blue Death, don't think I—"

"Yes, Ty Lee?"

Azula turned halfway in her saddle, the wind flapping her bangs around her face.

Ty Lee paused for a second, having obviously not actually thought of a thing to say.

"Are we there yet?" she finally said.

There was a brief stretch of silence so intensely pregnant I could already see the stillborn baby. I watched Azula's ever present urge to engage in some casual murder war with her inherent softness for Ty Lee.

The softness for Ty Lee won out.

"No, Ty Lee. I did not bring us to this island just to enjoy this heinous jungle."

She tried to turn back forward, but Ty Lee spoke again before she could. Ty Lee shifted her weight on Fluffles, and placed her hands on her hips.

"How much longer? I'm bored."

Ty Lee ducked out of the way of a low-hanging branch that Aliko immediately dove for, and then spent a good thirty seconds hanging off fluffles at a truly uncomfortable angle. I could see the long muscles running along her back run taut, but she held it like it was nothing.

"Not much longer, and if you are so incapable of spending even thirty seconds in silence, look behind you—look at how lonely Mai looks."

Ty Lee glanced back at me, and Azula smiled the smile of a cuckoo snake when it pushes robinhawk eggs out of its nest back at me.

"Mai," Ty Lee said.

"I don't know, Ty Lee," I said. "In the colonies I had Tom-Tom to keep me company," _ and Tom-Tom is perfect _, I knew I didn't have to add, "but imagine how much time Azula must have had to spend in her palace, all alone, after Zuko had been banished and we left."

Ty Lee's eyes widened, and began to shine with tears. Slowly, she turned back to Azula.

"Oh look," Azula said. "We're here."

I blinked at the green jungle around us. Ty Lee fell silent to look all around her.

Enormous trees towered above us, the lowest hanging branches now much too high for even Aliko to try scrape me off onto. The ground was thick black-green underbrush that looked like the gaping maw of a particularly unfriendly venus fly bear. Everything was cast with a pale green tinge, which painted the brown of the bark of the trees around us about the color of puke, an impression that was not helped by their uneven, lumpy texture.

It took Ty Lee about a minute to realize Azula had lied to her.

"Azula!" she began. "You—"

And then we were very suddenly no longer in the jungle, and instead on an enormous lake that extended hundreds of feet in every direction.

"I'm sorry," Azula said, despite the fact that every second year academy student knew that sabretooth wolves were actually incapable of feeling remorse, "I got excited."

Ty Lee screamed an incomprehensible scream of excitement in response as Azula pulled The Blue Death to the stop, spinning him around to face us, Fluffles and Aliko screeching to a stop, spraying green, brackish water in every direction but Azula's.

When I looked down at the black-green water that Azula had magically avoided, the smell of it hit me—water that stank like it had been stagnant for a century. I swallowed last night's dinner, which had already made it about the level of my voice box, and averted my eyes, in the hope that it would ease the smell.

It didn't, of course.

"Well," Azula said over Ty Lee's screaming, "I guess Uncle wasn’t lying about everything."

It took me a moment to understand what I was looking at. A lake, almost circular behind us, but extending jaggedly out before us, sometimes not more than a hundred feet before us, but sometimes hundreds of feet, so far I couldn’t see the end. There were no obvious water sources before us, and the loudly stangnant stench of the water beneath us undercut that reality.

I looked to my left, and noticed that the trees closest to the lake had a peculiar sort of shape—their branches thick and expansive away from the lake, but spindly and scrawny towards towards the lake. Long scars ran up and down their fronts, the bark twisted and ruined.

I turned back to Azula, as Ty Lee asked "What wasn’t he lying about?" while Azula smiled the smile of seven year old girls smiled when they set your house on fire.

I had a sinking feeling, much like I had had when a seven-year-old Azula had set my house on fire.

"That he battled a dragon on this island, of course." She spread her hands wide, gesturing to the massive expanse of water around us, the burn and lightning scars on the trees closest to us. The lake around us that had formed when it had rained into the burned crater that had been carved into the ground by a hundred strikes of a dragon's flame.

I felt a chill down my spine like I imagine my parents had felt when they had been forced to jump from their bedroom window to escape from burning to death.

Ty Lee made a happy little keening noise, and I leaned over Aliko to glance down at the surface of the nasty water beneath us. The water was thick, and murky, like a particularly vile stew, but if it had been only a couple feet deep, I would have been able to make out the bottom.

I couldn't.

I looked back at Azula, and that glint in her eyes that spelled unpleasantness for all involved. Azula was looking for the dragon that had done this. She was doing it to bring down the man who had been able to fight it.

"Are we gonna get to meet the dragon that did this?" Ty Lee said excitedly, after she was done screaming.

"Of course." Azula said. "We're going to find the dragon that did this, and we're going to—"

I missed the rest of what Azula said, because Aliko had noticed me leaning over her back, and had taken that to mean that she should do a little roll.

I came up, substantially wetter and substantially stinkier, what felt like about thirty years later, when Azula was done talking about how she was going to murder a dragon that could make lakes with its fire, but just in time to hear Ty Lee say, "No, Azula, we should make it our pet. Imagine, you'd be the first Fire Lord since Sozin to have a _ dragon _. And I'd be the first Fire... Fire..."

If Ty Lee had noticed my little dip, she didn't show it. You'd think that being dunked into water would wash away the sand that was had managed to work its way into my bone marrow, but you'd be wrong. Instead, all of the places I used to have sand, I now had smelly mud.

"Fire Lord's friend to have a dragon!"

Ty Lee noticed me, and then frowned at me.

"What happened, Mai?"

"I was given a justifiable reason for mongoose lizard murder."

"But, Mai," Azula said. "Look at how proud Aliko is of herself." Aliko screeched at Azula's praise. "What a good girl."

"I want to die," I said, as a waspquito considered trying to sting me before it reconsidered its life choices, and flew towards Azula to be murdered.

"You can't die, not before we have our dragon!"

"We're killing the dragon," Azula said.

"No," Ty Lee bemoaned, drawing it out.

"If you need me," I said, leaning forward to grab Aliko's reins, and turning her back towards the jungle behind us. "I'll be in the ship, burning my clothing."

"The ship will have already unloaded its cargo, and should be out in the bay by the time you get back."

"I can swim," I lied.

"Are you sure you want to go, Mai?" Azula asked, a lilt in her voice not at all covering the hard edge to to her tone. "Imagine everything you'd be _ missing _ if you went back now."

I turned back to glance at the smile eleven year old girls smile when they tell you to go say goodbye to their brothers, because he probably won't make it much longer.

I couldn't see Ty Lee where she was directly behind me, but I could hear her uncomfortable humming.

The silence between us stretched from seconds to tens of seconds to a minute, Ty Lee's uncomfortable humming reaching a fever pitch before Azula broke the silence.

"I'm kidding, of course, Mai," Azula said, her genuine smile at my suffering sliding into something fake. "I would never make you go back alone. I'll even have the captain send a ship so you won't have to swim to get that shower."

I heard Ty Lee laugh an uncomfortable laugh.

"I also need to take a look at the maps we have off the island—I just wanted to check to make sure Iroh wasn't an _ obvious _ liar before I wasted any of Captain Wu's precious time."

"Fantastic," I said. "I was going to be so lonely."

Azula slapped The Blue Death's reins, and he straightened from where he was snuffling at the water. As she passed me, she set a hand on my shoulder, her hand as unpleasantly warm as it always was.

"I'm always here for you, Mai," she said, smile on her face as sharp as a knife. 

"I'm here for you, too, Mai!" Ty Lee declared, leaping from Fluffles to Aliko to give me a tight hug from behind because she already smelled like a sewer.

"Thanks," I said.

"Any time," Azula said, whipping The Blue Death into a gallop, without turning away. "Didn't you know—all you have to do is ask. Isn't that right, Ty Lee?"

"Yep!" Ty Lee shouted directly into my ear as Fluffles filed in after The Blue Death, completely unperturbed by her lack of a rider, and Aliko filed in after her.

"How lucky I am," I said, "to have a friend like you, Princess."

"I'm glad we agree," Azula said, her voice no longer bothering to lilt.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I feel like Aliko is like, pretty unquestionably my greatest creation. I have already peaked. It is all downhill from here.


	6. Book 0.5 - Chapter 5

It wasn't until our third day on the island that we returned to the jungle. The rest of the first day was spent with me in the greatest and most wasteful bath that Fire Nation has ever known, and the second day was spent in a hot black tent with sand for a floor while Azula went carefully over seven different maps in silence, and then on the deck of the battleship as it made another incredibly slow route around the island while Azula compared and contrasted what she saw with what was on her seven maps.

That night, we slept on the beach, because why would we sleep inside a battleship, where it was clean and where there was no sand, when we could sleep on sand.

By the third morning, I was pretty sure that sand was a permanent part of my complexion, and I itched in places I didn't know I had.

That morning, Azula went over her seven maps one last time, and then turned to us with a confident smirk.

"I know where the dragon is," she told us.

Fifteen minutes later and we were in the jungle, heading towards a canyon that sat between the two mountains that dominated the island's rather distinctive silhouette, once again enjoying that special puke palor to the trees around us, and also enjoying that hint of tainted sweetness I had missed on our first excursion.

Azula reported that the canyon would be about five hours from the beach, four hours further than the puddle of hedgedog urine that liked to pretend it was a lake. It wouldn't be directly in our path, so we were thankfully able to avoid once again having to experience it, and I was able to avoid the risk of Aliko deciding I needed another bath.

For the first hour, the trip was uneventful, aside from Aliko's standard attempted rider-murder, and Ty Lee's continued attempts to convince Azula that they should tame the dragon when they found it, rather than killing it.

I had thought she'd forgotten about it over the preceeding forty-eight hours, but I had been wrong.

"Azula, but imagine—a pet dragon."

"Dragons eat their master's bodies when they die. We never found Sozin's remains, because his dragon ate him when he died. Do you want to be eaten when you die, Ty Lee?"

"It's the way they show their affection!"

"No, Ty Lee, it's how they show their contempt for their human masters."

The waspquitos, for their part, were now very interested in my sand-flavored flesh now that it was now not also hedgedog urine flavored.

I was wiping the black goop of a waspquito's insides off my knife onto Aliko flank about an hour and fifteen minutes into our ride when the jungle around us began to vibrate with a deep, resonant buzzing.

At first, there wasn't much to it, barely loud enough to hear, like a waspquito buzzing across the room. But as we continued deeper into the jungle, the canopy grew thicker above us, the sweet rancid smell got stronger, and the buzzing grew louder as well. It went from a waspquito across the room, to a waspquito by our ears, to a waspquito inside our ears.

The entire jungle rumbled with it, the canopy shaking dead leaves and twigs down upon us.

Another minute passed, another minute of the cloying sweet smell growing stronger, the buzzing growing louder, and the jungle growing darker, and then a line of eyes opened before us.

The Blue Death screeched to a stop as the eyes surged forward, going up on his hindmost legs to prevent three different jaws from slamming shut on his face.

The owners of the eyes were enormous insects, four eyes on each side of their head, jaws the length of my entire arm, and a mantle of grey-green fur around their necks. Their entire faces vibrated with the buzzing that was now deafening and all around us, the tainted sweetness now clearly the stench of rotting flesh.

Aliko pulled herself to a stop hard enough she would have thrown me from her back if I had not already leaped from her back.

The next five minutes were a blur of knives and ichor and  _ noise _ . The enormous insects erupted from all sides, and fell from the canopy above us, everywhere a mess of brown limbs and snapping jaws.

There aren't many creatures that can survive a knife to the eye, and I was grateful that the insects that we were surrounded by were no exception to the rule, but that gratefulness was short-lived. The insects falling from the sky landed on and around Aliko, Fluffles, and The Blue Death. The mongoose lizards screamed as they thrashed at the lizards swarming them, and—

It was dark.

The only light around us was the light of the sun, where it filtered, green, down through the leaves of the canopy above us.

This wasn't a problem for me—the insects eyes helpfully glowed in the dark, but—

As I killed two insects that tried to make my mongoose lizard into two mongoose lizards, ducking under a swipe at my head, then jumping onto the head of another, twisting to drive a dagger through its eyes, I searched for Azula in the darkness.

It was hard to find her though the chaos and the darkness, with the blue flames that should have indicated her presence nowhere to be found.

"Princess!" I shouted, still searching frantically for a spark, finally able to put my back to the mongoose lizards again, the insects that had fallen from the sky all dead and twitching.

I had been distracted, and when I looked back forwards, two massive brown jaws yawned before me for a split second before they were driven into the ground with a snap.

"What, Mai?" Azula said, hand on the insect's broken neck. "Don't tell me these pathetic excuses for predators are scaring you."

She was untouched, aside from the black ichor splattered across her face and clothing.

She lifted an ichor splattered hand, and unsuccessfully tried to shake her bangs free from where they were stuck against the ichor smear in her cheek. She ducked the next insect's jaws, slamming her left hand up into the thin connecting tissue between the insect's head and its body with a snap, while using the back of her right hand to slick her stuck bang back behind her ear.

I had seen Azula do a great deal of things, but I had never seen her as dirty as she was then.

I turned, threw a knife or three into a couple more eyes, and it was over.

The jungle returned to its previous murmurings, the jungle returned to its puke tinge, and the stench of rotting flesh went nowhere. We were surrounded by a veritable mountain of broken insect bodies.

"Ty Lee?" I asked them.

"I'm hurt you didn't ask for my help," Ty Lee said, emerging from behind a particularly large insect, her hands just as smeared with black ichor as Azula's were. "But I guess that makes sense—I don't think these things even have ki!"

The black mess that covered her hands indicated that that had not posed much of a problem to her. She frowned down at her hands, and then wiped them off on her shirt.

"Gross,"she said brightly and quite accurately, not sounding very repulsed. She looked back at us, and smiled. "Well, that was fun! What were these things?"

"Jungle crawlers," Azula said from where she was crouched before one of the mostly whole insect bodies that lacked one of its left eyes. She frowned at it. "I had thought we had wiped these monstrosities out centuries ago. This may not be one of the main islands, but what is this, The Earth Kingdom?"

Ty Lee laughed appreciatively at Azula's attempt at humor while Azula tossed me the knife she had pulled from the crawler's eye. I stepped back to allow it to fall into the crawler body I was standing on, and then picked it up.

Azula rolled her eyes at my refusal to lose a finger to her garbage knife-throwing skills. "You're such a drama queen, Mai," she said, tucking a foot under the insect that was larger than she was , and then kicking it into a tree.

It hit the bark with a crack, and the fell back to the ground with a crunch. 

"Oh, that looks fun," Ty Lee said, tucking her foot under another crawler and not realizing I was standing in front of her, "let me try!"

I ducked under the crawler, but Aliko behind me didn't, and complained very loudly as a crawler crashed into her side.

"Oh," Ty Lee said, realizing the existence of other beings, possibly for the first time. "Sorry, The Blue Death!"

I heard Aliko screech, and then an uncomfortable cracking, ripping noise. I looked back to find Aliko gnawing on a crawler leg, and looking as striped-mulish as a mongoose lizard was capable of looking as she did it.

I walked over to her, ignoring the sounds of Ty Lee and Azula engaging in a who-can-kick-the-horrible-insect-monster contest, and I threw the knife Azula had retrieved for me into a nearby tree before I set to retrieving my second knife from the dungeon crawler Aliko was currently eating the leg of.

The less said about the process, the better. I wasn't particularly happy about having to retrieve my knives from the eyes of the crawlers I had killed, but I disliked the idea of going further into this jungle without my full complement of knives even less.

It took longer to retrieve my knives than it had taken to throw them, but fifteen minutes later, I had drawn the character death with all thirteen knives and one dagger I had used to kill fourteen dungeon crawlers.

Azula and Ty Lee were up in the canopy, where they had gone after Azula had unequivocally won the game of kick-the-monster by kicking a dungeon crawler with my knife in it into the canopy, where had gotten stuck.

They were now sunbathing on it—I could see their feet on one end of the crawler's bulbous hindquarters, and their heads hanging off the other—because it was a well known fact that salamander geckos would die if they went without sun for longer than an hour.

Ty Lee had at least extracted my knife from the crawler's head and dropped it before she had begun sunbathing.

I cleaned each knife, checked it for damage against the sun streaming in through the hole Azula had punched through the canopy, and then slid them back into their sheaths.

Only two of the knives were showing new signs of wear, which was something like a relief. After I was done, I looked at the black rag that had once been a white cloth, and then dropped it on the ground.

"Oh good," I heard Azula say from above me. "You're done." The ground shook with the force of one hundred and thiry pounds of Azula crashing into it at speed. "Took you long enough." The ground shook again as a hundred and ten pounds of Ty Lee crashed into the ground at roughly equal speed.

"Yeah, thanks for helping," I said straightening my robe now that the lapels were equally weighted once more.

"What are friends for?" Azula clicked her tongue, and The Blue Death stood from where he was eating a crawler and began to dash towards her. "Stop," Azula ordered, and The Blue Death slid across the branches beneath us as he tried to come to a stop. "Wipe your face, you're disgusting."

The Blue Death scraped the black ichor off of his face with his front two legs to the best of his ability, which wasn't very good. He then licked it off, which was substantially more effective.

Mongoose Lizards are gross.

"We should be entering the canyon soon," Azula said, once we were riding again, "and then the dragon's lair should be another hour's ride."

Twenty seconds passed, and then—

"Azula, but—"

"Did you know that when Sozin fought Agni Kais, he would have his dragon rip his opponent in half, and make them watch his dragon eat their lower halves?"

"That's super gross, but isn't a reason why we shouldn't have a pet dragon!"

Oh, yes. I was so glad this argument was happening again.

"Mai, you agree with me, right?"

"Of course not, Mai agrees with me."

I looked up at the two expectant gazes directed back at me.

"I think we should just quit and go home."

"It doesn't matter what Mai thinks," Azula said, now that it had been decided I didn't agree with her. "I'm the crown princess of the fire nation."

Ty Lee made a farting noise to show what she thought of that. "I think that Mai's answer is closer to 'have a dragon for a pet' than 'kill the dragon'! It's two against one, Azula."

_ It doesn't matter what you think _ , Azula didn't say. I yawned, and leaned forward to rest my chin on my hands where they were folded across Aliko's neck.

It was substantially less comfortable than I had been hoping it would be, each step Aliko took slamming the back of my hands into my jaw and slamming my teeth together, but I stuck with it, because at least I looked like I was comfortable, which I figured was about half as good as actually being comfortable.

_ Clack clack clack _ .

_ Clack clack clack _ .

Azula and Ty Lee continued arguing about whether they should tame or murder the dragon for the next hour, which was apparently Azula's definition of "soon", and we came upon the canyon that Azula mentioned.

We were interrupted once more by a swarm of jungle crawlers, but this time, Azula ordered me not to help "I don't want to have to wait for another hour for you to retrieve all your knives." It was fun. I got to wait on Aliko, chin on my hands, while Azula and Ty Lee got to engage in their favorite hobby of murder and violence, respectively.

"Geez," Ty Lee said, smearing ichor into her hair as she slicked the hair that had fallen from he braids back to her scalp. "I forgot how much fun it was to fight like this!"

"See, aren't you glad I came to get you?"

We don't need to talk about the awkward silence that followed Azula's words.

Upon arriving at the canyon, Ty Lee immediately dismounted and then leaned as far as she could possibly leaning over the canyon wall.

"Wow, look at that drop," Ty Lee said, teetering dangerously.

The center of the canyon was dominated by a river, rushing both faster and wider than I had been expecting, the gurgling audible, if only barely, even up on the wall where we were. It was surprisingly well lit, the canyon wide enough the sun wasn't blocked by the trees towering over us, but it grew darker as you grew closer to the walls, and the bottom of the canyon wall directly below us was impenetrably dark. 

The canyon wasn't actually directly between the mountains, as I had been imagining, instead ran from the base of one and past the other, carving out what almost looked like a moat. I looked up, briefly, at the towering mountain before us, its top glittering with ice.

"Yes," Azula said, tossing a lit flare over the edge of the cliff. We watched it fall, and fall, and fall.

It hit the ground, and shattered into a dozen bright red specks, revealing the area at the base of the canyon wall to be dominated by the black and green undergrowth beneath our feet, with the proper trees of the jungle starting further in from the wall, where they could actually see sunlight.

"Oh, yay," I said, as the bright red specks grew brighter as the jungle's underbrush caught fire.

"We're a little off course," Azula said, leaning over the edge, and looking right, and then left. We had managed to come on the single sheerest area of the canyon wall—the wall had substantially more handholds and ledges not too far in both directions.

We went right, because Azula had used her magical powers of knowing-everything to decide that right was obviously the correct way to go, and then after about a hundred feet, we had a terrifying few minutes when Azula decided we could take the current state of ledges on the wall, and our mongoose lizards screeched and scrambled down the mostly sheer canyon wall.

"Yeah," I offered, once we had arrived mostly unscathed at the base of the cliff, aside from the five years of life we had had to sacrifice to Agni to survive the scramble. "That was fine."

Azula pshed at me. "Grow up, Mai," she said.

"I thought it was fun," Ty Lee offered.

"It was fun."

I folded my hands back on Aliko's neck, now that I no longer needed to hold onto them for dear life, and then set my chin on them.

"Are we going to climb that to get back?"

"Of course not, don't be ridiculous."

_ Of course not _ .

The bottom of the cliff wasn't as dark as it had looked from the top, because I was just barely able to see Aliko's head before she tried to lick me, but it was still pretty dark.

Azula didn't start a fire for us, because everyone knew that salamander geckos could see in the dark, and Azula is fundamentally incapable of thinking of people other than herself.

The foliage in the canyon was lighter than it had been on the ridge above us, the trees shorter, their canopies sparser. There was the burbling of a river, somewhere off to our left. Behind us, the underbrush burned.

"Should we be worrying about that?" Ty Lee asked, pointing back towards the blaze in between statements about what a great pet a dragon would be ( _ They're so big, though! _ ) and Azula telling her yet another horrifying dragon fact. I was wondering when she'd get around to mentioning their habit of setting Fire Nation cities on fire, which was the reason Sozin gave for the kill order.

"No. Did you know that dragons will kill and roast the runts of their litters, and then feed them to the rest of their children? Because they do."

There was a moment of silence that passed Ty Lee's standard twenty second threshold, which Ty Lee spent glancing anxiously back at the fire raging behind us. It lasted long enough for Azula to turn back towards us.

She followed Ty Lee's gaze towards the fire that I could see out of the corner of my right eye that was burning the bright, brilliant red of a flare.

"It's nothing," Azula said, of the one hundred square yards of burning forest. "Jungles need the occasional burn."

Ty Lee made a pitiful noise, and continued glancing back at the raging jungle-fire.

Azula rolled her eyes at me, seeking affirmation that this was indeed totally normal. I elected to not engage, doing my best to feel as comfortable as I'm sure I looked.

_ Clack clack clack _ .

"Fine," Azula said. "You're being stupid, but fine."

She reached out her right hand towards the fire, pulled it back like she was grasping a hold of something, and then slammed her hand down. In the distance, the brilliant red of the fire snapped to a more reasonable red when she took a hold of it, and then vanished as she slammed her hand down, like it had never been.

You know, aside from the massive plumes of black smoke.

"Happy now?"

"We can just protect the runts of the litter," Ty Lee said. "I'll raise them, I'm sure they're cute."

"Did you know that baby dragons are known to set rabbit squirrels and baby badger moles on fire, just to watch them burn?"

What followed is what I estimated to be about twenty years of Azula and Ty Lee arguing over whether they should kill the dragon or not, while we walked through a path that was only barely large enough for humans and not even close to wide enough for mongoose lizards, river roaring to our left. By the end, I was pretty sure Tom-Tom was already a grown man. I had missed out on what would assuredly have been an adorable childhood, and a very adorably awkward adolescence.

It was with the image of Tom-Tom, big and bearded, with a cute little top knot, introducing me to his first born daughter, who he of course named after his Aunt Mai, that I interrupted Ty Lee before she could explain that they could totally work around the fact that dragons liked mud baths and got mud everywhere, and said—

"My great-grandfather was killed by a dragon."

Ty Lee froze, mouth half open. Azula glanced back at me, looking at me in the way salamander geckos look at you when they're not sure you're fucking with them.

"His name was Yong," I supplied, when no one responded.

Ty Lee pouted.

"Fine," she said. "I guess we can kill the dragon. For Mai's great-grandpa Yong."

"Great-grandpa" Yong was killed by Sozin's dragon by getting ripped in half and having his bottom half eaten in front of him, but Ty Lee didn't need to know that.

Azula turned back forward, managing to make her top knot bounce in a way that looked haughty. "Is that all it took?" she said, sniffing. "My great grandpa was eaten by dragon."

"Your great grandpa was eaten by his pet dragon! That's totally different."

This was followed by about a single blissful minute in which Azula was silent and Ty Lee was as silent as she was capable of being ( _ Hey, what's that? _ ), leaving me to not be able to hear the  _ clack clack clack _ 'ing of my teeth over the roaring of the river in peace.

But, of course, it was not to last.

“How do you kill a dragon, anyways?” Ty Lee asked, having tired of staring at our slightly-less-puke-colored-but-still-pretty-puke-colored surroundings.

“Well, Azulon was a fan of punching holes in their wings with lightning, and then getting a garrison to sacrifice themselves to tie the dragon down before chopping off its head.”

He had made a scroll of it, too. The Death of a Dragon. We’d been made to evaluate it in our art history class back at academy, which Ty Lee had never successfully managed to stay awake through.

“That was because grandad was weak, though. Dad liked to kill them by out bending them. If you can steal their fire, you can kill them.”

Ty Lee made an unhappy noise. “But how would  _ I  _ kill one?”

“You won’t. I’ll kill it.”

I could feel it coming before it did.

“No! I want to do it! I have to avenge Mai's great grandpa...” she paused, searching for his name for about a second before giving up. “I have to avenge Mai's great grandpa! It’s important!”

I sighed.

“I’m sure Mai would much rather  _ I _ kill it. Imagine how honored her great grandfather would be, knowing that his death was avenged by the crown princess of the fire nation!”

Yeah, that sounds like my great grandfather. He was a huge fan of Sozin's line―that’s why he tried to help Sozin's second cousin steal the throne.

“No, no!” Ty Lee countered. “I’m sure her great grandpa...” she tried again, failed again, “I’m sure her great grandpa would much rather a fellow nonbender―” she pointed to herself with a flourish “―avenge him.”

Yong, if memory served, had been of the opinion that Sozin's line had been altogether too nice to the peasant classes, and that they should put under the firey whips of their betters. 

Ty Lee looked back at me. Azula didn’t look back at me, engrossed in picking a path through the undergrowth so horrendously thick I found myself agreeing with Azula that it probably be better for the jungle to have burned.

“Mai,” Azula said, in that tone of hers that managed to express just how much better she was than you in a single syllable.

“Mai,” Ty Lee said, her eyes shining like a hedgepuppy.

“I think I should kill it,” I said.

There was a full minute of silence.

“You’re hilarious, Mai,” Azula finally said.

“Oh,” Ty Lee said, coughing out a an incredibly fake laugh. “It’s a joke. Ha!” She gave me a couple more game laughs before looked at me very seriously. “Don’t do it Mai, you’ll die.”

“Thanks for the vote of confidence, Ty Lee.”

“It’s important,” she said, doing her what to scrunch her face into an “it’s important” face.

She wasn’t very successful.

“We’ll work together instead!” she said, turning back to Azula. “That’s a better idea―then we can all share.”

In the murder.

We can all share in the murder that would complete the eradication of a species.

Azula didn't respond, presumably because she didn't want to share, and had finally realized that not engaging was the only way to win. But also possibly because the jungle was starting to lighten, light filtering in not just from above us but from in front of us.

With the every step we took, the jungle before us grew lighter and lighter and lighter until our mongoose lizards stepped out of the valley and into a massive clearing populated only with light undergrowth that stretched from one wall of the valley to the other. It wasn't quite as impressive as it would have been an hour before, the canyon substantially narrower this close to its source, but it was still enormous.

On the left wall of the clearing was an enormous waterfall, water pouring down the left canyon wall to meet the river we'd been walking along in a deafening sort of roar. In the canyon wall beside the river to our left, and in the canyon wall to our right were caves with entrances that were almost circular, like they'd been dug out, rather than being naturally formed.

Looking at the caves, all of Azula's horrible dragon facts rushed back into my memory, and a chill ran down my back.

"Stay here," Azula said, dismounting from The Blue Death and walking towards the cave to our left.

"But Princess—"

"It's not a request."

Ty Lee froze at the stark coldness in Azula's tone, mouth half open, and then slowly closed it, glancing at me out of the corner of her eye.

I did my best to smile comfortingly at her.

Azula stepped through the mouth of the cave, and vanished into the darkness. I stared after her for a moment, waiting for the plume of blue fire, but nothing came.

I glanced at the gaping maw of the cave on the left canyon wall, and it remained just as silent.

"Umm," Ty Lee said, fidgeting. "Azula's gonna be okay, right?"

_ I'd like to see what could kill her. _

"Azula said that her father was able to kill a dragon with just his bending, right?"

Ty Lee nodded.

"Have you ever seen a better firebender than Azula?"

Ty Lee shook her head, but didn't look very convinced. She chewed on her lip, staring at the cave currently holding Azula and possibly also holding a dragon. I was altogether more concerned with the cave that was not holding Azula, but also possibly holding a dragon.

"Azula's been weird, lately. She never wants to spar with me. What if she's  _ weak _ now?"

"Ty Lee—" I began, not sure how I was going to finish the sentence, but Ty Lee didn't give me a chance.

"I'm going to go help." Ty Lee dismounted Fluffles, and started striding towards the cave.

"Ty Lee, wait!"

Ty Lee didn't wait.

"Fuck," I said, dismounting and almost immediately slipping on the slickness of the undergrowth beneath my feet. I caught myself, but by the time I did, Azula had appeared at the mouth of the cave.

She slid a disdainful gaze to where we were obviously violating her order.

"Princess, did you—"

"It was empty," Azula said shortly, walking past Ty Lee. Ty Lee watched her go, that hedgepuppy gleam in her eye. Azula snapped her fingers, and leapt atop The Blue Death's back as he rushed towards her.

Ty Lee fidgeted as Azula dismounted The Blue Death on the other side of the river, and entered the other cave.

"Look at it this way," I said, finally coming back to senses. "Azula could be wrong."

I had forgotten, in the course of five hours of horribly dragon facts, that Iroh probably didn't lie, and Azula was probably just making it all up.

Ty Lee turned to me, looked down at the stretch of about twenty feet of undergrowth between us, and then shuffled over to me so she could attach herself to my side.

"I guess," she said, squeezing my left arm. "But Azula's never wrong?"

Azula was often wrong. She was just also the Crown Princess of the Fire Nation, and could change the world to match her personal needs. I doubted she could use her power as the Crown Princess of the Fire Nation make the dragons Iroh killed come back to life.

But then again, I had also doubted her ability to arrange for her father to burn Zuko's face off, so I'd been wrong before.

We waited, listening to the roar of the rivers crashing and swirling together before us, and to Ty Lee's low whine.

Azula reappeared at the cave mouth. She rode The Blue Death back over the river, and came to a stop before us.

"The cave's are empty," she said. 

_ Maybe that's because they died twenty years ago _ , I didn't say.

"Maybe they're just out hunting!"

"The only scorch marks in the cave are old," Azula said, lending credence to the  _ they died twenty years ago _ argument.

"Maybe they went out hunting a long time ago?"

Azula ignored Ty Lee's offered opinion, and scuffed a boot at the rough undergrowth beneath her feet.

"A dragon would never allow undergrowth like this outside their lair," she said, kicking at it. She drew two scales only a little smaller than her hands from the pockets of her pants, one brilliant red, and one a brilliant blue, and tossed them to Ty Lee. "Here, it's a present."

Ty Lee fumbled them, having forgotten that Azula was garbage at throwing things and trying to catch them was always a mistake. She dropped the blue one, but kept a hold of the red one. In the process, she had released my hand, so I crouched down to the pick up the red one.

It was cold. Until I touched it, I had been expecting it to somehow still be warm, after however many years it had been since the scales had been shed.

I held it for a moment, and then handed it to Ty Lee, who took it, looking sort of confused about what to do with her two new dragon scales. 

They were worth more than her parents would make in their entire lives.

Meanwhile, Azula was digging her hands into the undergrowth covering the clearing floor, and began to dig. She pulled up a fistful of black undergrowth, and then another. It took her four fistfuls to get to the black dirt beneath the undergrowth.

She dug her fingers into it, and then glanced up at the edge of the clearing behind me. She dropped her head down to the level of the undergrowth, and stared sidways at the edge of the clearing behind me. 

I glanced to my right, and found Ty Lee gone. I glanced back, and found her tottering over to Fluffles, who, coincidentally, was also worth more than her parents would make on their entire lives, where she opened up the saddlebags and shoved her two new scales inside. It was a bit of a rough way to treat her family's newest most valuable asset, but, I guess that was her choice.

When I turned back to Azula, she had tired of sniffing at the ground, and was making her way over to the mouth of the cave. She pulled a flare from a pocket, broke it, and tossed it inside the cave.

The brilliant red light illuminated bare rock that was rough, marred with dozens of deep scratch marks on the floor, walls, and ceiling, but it didn’t reveal the end of the tunnel. It kept on going, further and further, until it disappeared once again into blackness.

Azula walked to the mouth of the cave, and ran her fingers over the stone. She moved into the cave, and ran her fingers over the wall there, and then the corners of her lips twitched. She walked further into the cave, smashing the flare back into nothingness as she passed it, and vanished into the darkness.

Ty Lee made her way back to my side, now lighter two priceless artifacts, and looked at the dark cave, and then at me.

"Azula looks happy," she said.

"Yeah," I agreed, looking at the ground the hole she'd dug in the undergrowth that I swore was already smaller than it had been when she dug it, and then over at the walls of the cave mouth. I could only imagine she wasn't happy because she realized that Iroh killed the dragons that lived here, and we could all just go home.

We only waited a minute or two for Azula to emerge from the cave, her lips curled into a smug smile. She was doing her happy Azula prance as she walked back to us.

"Well," she said once she was back in earshot, "it looks like Uncle is a bit smarter than I thought, but not anywhere near as smart as he thinks he is." She came to a stop before us. "There were never any dragons here at all. This was all a ruse, to convince the people that came to double check his work that there really were dragons on this island, but there never were."

That was certainly one way of looking at it. It had the added benefit that all conspiracy theories do, of being resistant to counter arguments with the argument  _ that's what Iroh wants you to think _ .

"No one ever did, because Grandpa was always soft on Uncle, which was good for Uncle, because he was  _ sloppy _ ." She spat it out like it was a dirty word. "Let's go," she said, stepping between us, "I'm sure the dragons were actually from a nearby island—Uncle was always  _ so  _ lazy."

I considered the massive clearing, the huge caves dug into the rock, and elected not to state the obvious.

"Wait!" Ty Lee called after Azula, who was already probably about twenty feet behind us. "How can you be so sure?"

Azula jumped atop The Blue Death, and looked down at Ty Lee like she was being simple. She then turned to me. "Mai, you see it, too, right?"

Azula's golden eyes glittered with expectation, making it clear the correct answer was yes.

I turned away from her, and surveyed Azula's hole in the ground, the cave wall, what I remembered of the inside of the cave. If I began with the assumption that this was all fake, what evidence could I make up to support that conclusion?

I glanced at Azula's hole in the ground, the loose black dirt under the undergrowth, the edge of the forest Azula had glared it with her face almost touching the undergrowth. I glanced at the cave mouth, briefly closing my eyes to see that tunnel, the floor, walls, and ceiling all equally rough, all equally covered in scratches. But I hadn't seen whatever Azula had seen deep in the cave, where the dragon was purported to have slept, but—

I turned back to Azula.

"There's still dirt on the ground, which would have been washed away if this land was cleared for any reasonable length of time." Azula smiled at me. "The floor of the cave is as rough as the walls and the ceiling, when it should have been worn down by the dragon dragging itself through it." Azula's smile grew wider. "And the scorch marks in the cave are all the same age."

"I knew I could count on you, Mai," Azula said, as Ty Lee turned back to me with wonder in her eyes.

It's amazing the things you can explain if you get to just assume the answer from the start. 

The dragon could have left the undergrowth intact, or a flood could have brought mud in from down stream. The dragons could have flown into their caves, which would have left their floors and walls with equal wear, and there was no way Azula could actually tell the difference between a scorch mark that was twenty years old and one that was two hundred years old. I was only barely convinced she could tell the difference between a scorch mark that was a year old, and one that was twenty years old.

They called what we were doing chasing dragons for a reason. Since Iroh, no one had actually found them.   
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Fun fact: Originally, this story was called Chasing Dragons.


	7. Book 0.5 - Chapter 6

It had been twenty-seven days since we left The Last Island. Twenty seven days, and fourteen islands and counting. 

I had had the misfortune of being in the same room as Azula and the captain as they went over the maps the fire nation navy had available to them of this region (best maps in the world), and I wasn’t hopeful.

“Jungle, mountains, and mud.”

Every island so far had had a description that were just fancier and more polite ways of saying that same thing, All islands so far, and all other islands in this mini archipelago. (There were thirty-one—so at the current rate, another twenty-eight days.) Jungle, mountains, and mud. There were two islands which had an asterisk next to mountains which meant they were Jungle, volcanos, and mud. We'd been to one so far, and if there hadn't been that asterisk, I wouldn't have even realized there was anything different.

Every island was discarded after a day of surveying and a day of dragging me and Ty Lee through the jungle, because Azula had magical dragon detection powers.  _ Not this one _ , Azula would say, and at first Ty Lee would ask  _ How can you be sure?  _ And Azula would say  _ All of the places a dragon would nest on this island are clean _ , or  _ This island is too small _ , or  _ I don't know, let's set this island on fire.  _ That last one might not have happened.

Ty Lee doesn't ask  _ How can you be sure _ , any more.

Today was the second straight day that we were in the boat for the first time since when we left The Last Island. Azula wasn't happy about it, and had informed the Captain on two separate occasions that perhaps he was a little too afraid of the whirlpools he was directing the ship through, and not afraid enough of her.

Azula's threat hadn't been too successful, considering we were still on the boat, with no island in sight. I was on the deck, standing next to Azula somewhere near the prow, because Li's squad was going through firebending exercises near the stern, and Ty Lee was in our room doing some sort of weird naked stretching I didn’t want to have to look at or participate in.

Azula's expression was perfectly composed, but the air shivered above her hands where they rested on the railing, and standing next to her was like standing next to glass as it was being spun.

"The captain of this ship is an imbecile," she said, in that way of saying things that sounds normal, but is pitched to project. She turned to me, smiling a fake, glassy smile, heat pouring out from her slightly parted lips like a glass furnace someone didn't quite close all the way. "Don't you agree, Mai?"

"Oh yeah," I said, at a normal volume. "I also really hate not having to sleep in the sand."

Azula's glassy smile froze for a split second, probably as she was deciding whether or not she was going to understand my sarcasm.

"But it's so boring here, Mai. There's nothing to do. You came with me because you were so bored of the Ningde, and this is no better." 

Her hand came down on my shoulder, an uncomfortable but not painful heat penetrating through my three layers of fireproof clothing. She didn't squeeze, she just continued smiling her fake smile, pumping heat out into the foot of air between us. She squeezed my shoulder gently, but firmly.

"Isn't that right, Mai?"

Her smile remained in place, but her eyes assured me she was looking for a very particular answer, and would accept no others.

"I didn't know anything could be more boring than Ningde, but this ship is proving to me just how wrong I can be."

"Exactly," Azula said, her smile twisting into the smile six year old girls smiled when they threw rocks at turtleducks. "And it's all because Wu is such an incompetent imbecile. Perhaps I should have Dad demote him."

Wu was, of course, on the deck, or we would not be engaging in this charade. He was directing the firebending exercises of Li's squad, facing this way, so I could see his face over Azula's shoulder. He was doing his best to control his scowl, and was only moderately successful. He didn't have the advantage of actually having no human emotions the way Azula did.

In comparison to him, though, everyone else on the deck was just looking very uncomfortable, which was a feeling I couldn't help but share.

"Who would you like to replace him, Mai?" Azula asked, not finished with her charade. She leaned in, like she was going to share a secret with me, close enough I could feel the skin of my left cheek begin to burn with her closeness. "I know," she said, now in a projecting whisper, rather than a projecting normal voice, "It's that Private, isn't it?" Azula was smaller than me, so she was looking up at me through her pretty-short lashes. "What was his name again?" she asked, her breath starting to burn my exposed throat.

"Land ho!" someone said, saving me from having to say it. Azula spent a second staring up at me before she turned her gaze over my right shoulder, and looked to the horizon.

She hmphed though her nose, and straightened, releasing my shoulder. "Well, it looks like Wu isn't quite incompetent enough to get us lost in Fire Nation waters, but I suppose there's still time."

I pressed a brief hand to my neck, and then my cheek, the warmth from them fading fast before I turned back to the railing, and squinted at the horizon. I couldn't see it, but thankfully Azula could.

"Mai," Azula said, not turning to look at me, no longer trying to bounce her voice off the horizon. "What was his name again?"

I froze, and Azula smiled the beatific smile that nine year old girls smile when they rip the wings off of mantis flies.

"Li," I said, after a moment. "From the house of Feng."

"Right," Azula said. "How could I have forgotten?"

Azula, unlike Ty Lee, was capable of silence, so she was mercifully silent as we approached the newest "Jungle, mountains, mud" island.

I hadn't seen the map of it, but I was pretty confident in my assessment, sight unseen.

I was pretty confident in my assessment even when we got close enough that I could pick out the vaguely green colored splotch on the horizon, and then continued to be confident when it stopped looking like a slightly greener part of the sea, and started looking like an island.

I was a little less confident about a minute after that, when Azula pushed herself away from the railing, made her way up to the crow's nest in two inhuman jumps.

"Give me that," I could just barely hear Azula say, and watched her take the spyglass from the soldier, and aim it at the island. She was too far away for me to make out her expression, but after at most thirty seconds of peering at the island, she removed the spyglass from her eye, and turned down to me, her body language exuding the simple pleasure all children have when they are shoving dirt into other children's mouths.

She leapt off the crow's nest, crashed the four stories into the ground, and then walked up beside me again, brushing non-existent lint from her chest. She came to a stop beside me, and offered me the spyglass.

"Take a look, Mai," she said. "It looks like I'll finally be able to offer you that excitement you so dearly lacked."

I took the spyglass, and lifted it to my eye, taking a moment to focus it, and then another painfully long moment to find the island. When I finally did, I had to refocus the spyglass, because of course I did.

Once I did, shapes resolved themselves out of the green undulating mass of the jungle. Sharp, irregular shapes.

Sharp irregular shapes that were not, jungles, mountains, or mud.

Sharp, irregular shapes that looked an awful lot like stone towers.

I removed the spyglass from my eye, and found Azula meeting my eyes, smiling like she had found a new and smaller child to shove into the dirt.

"Fetch Ty Lee," she said. "It's time to kill some dragons."  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Fun fact: The opening in the front of a glass furnace is called a "glory hole". I assume this is because it is so bright it looks like the entrance to heaven or something, but uhhh. Yep.


	8. Book 1 - Chapter 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Book 1! Let's gooooo. Are you ready for a whole bunch of chapters that should be several chapters each? I'm ready for a whole bunch of chapters which should be several chapters each.
> 
> Three chapters today: if you got a notification for this chapter, you'll probably need to go back two chapters to not skip anything.

_ It's time to kill some dragons _ was jumping the gun a bit. It took another three hours of Ty Lee squirming between us  _ Ooooh, I wonder what's there—I wonder if it's the  _ Sun Warriors! before we reached the shore, and then we proceeded to slowly circumnavigate the island, as Azula compared what she saw to her six maps.

"These are all lies," she declared with disgust before ten minutes had passed. She arrayed all six maps out before her, which were all mostly identical and all, if Azula was to be believed, equally incorrect. "Look at this," she said, pointing at a meaningless squiggle in the map, and then pointing at the shore. "The person who drew this map had  _ clearly _ been to this island—the coastlines match too well to be coincidence—but they lied about what they found here."

Ty Lee gasped with horror, because she was a much better liar than she looked.

"I just might die, I'm so horrified."

Azula's nostrils flared with irritation. "What a coincidence," she said. "I just might kill someone." She closed her eyes briefly, straightened her bangs, and took a single, deep breath. The irritation dripped off her face, leaving her face perfectly calm. "But the deaths of..." she glanced down at the maps "Jun Dai, Jie Mo, Yan Kong, Tao Xiang, Qiang Tang, and Ping Kang can wait." She straightened the maps and then splayed them out again. "It looks like Uncle had a bit more power than I had given him credit for," she said. "But it looks like I wasn't wrong about how lazy he was. We're only fifty miles away from the island he made up as the nest of those dragons he killed. He didn't even bother going to the end of the archipelago.  _ Honestly _ ."

She spoke as if it was already decided that the island before us definitely had a dragon on it, and not just that it had some weird stone towers on it, but I wasn't terribly interested in contradicting her. I folded my hands across the railing, and prepared myself for three dreadfully boring hours as the battleship made its way around the island, at about the speed of a slothbear. 

Laid out before us was a beach just like all the beaches we had encountered before, the jungle a tangled mess behind it. The two towers and single pyramid beyond the thick mess of the jungle was admittedly new, but wasn't terribly interesting after three hours of seeing the same two towers and one pyramid.

The only other thing about the island that was unlike the islands we encountered before was the bizarrely shaped mountain out to our left, interrupting the sand of the beach. I could just barely see it in the distance, tall and thin, like an enormous natural sundial.

Nothing better to do, I watched the sundial mountain come closer and closer as our battleship continued to move at about the speed of a lame zebra donkey. When I glanced to my right, I found Ty Lee missing—in her place Azula, making notes on one of the lying maps. I twisted to look over my shoulder, hoping against hope Ty Lee hadn't decided to continue her naked stretching on the deck.

I hoped in vain, of course. Ty Lee had, at least, not taken her clothes off to continue, which I suppose was something. Right now she was laying face down on the ground.

It was actually a fairly human pose, in comparison to the truly unfortunate pretzel I had found Ty Lee in when I had gone to fetch her about three hours ago.

As if reading my mind, Ty Lee twisted her head up to look at me, and smiled. "It's fun," she lied. "Don't you want to come join me?"

She shook her shoulders in a way that was probably intended to be an invitation.

"Yeah, no," I said, turning properly and folding my hands behind me on the rail. "If I did that, then I would miss slowly seeing the other side of sundial mountain over there, and that would just be tragic."

"Boo," Ty Lee said, pushing her chest up, into a pose that was more appropriate for a dog seal than the human Ty Lee occasionally pretended to be.

When I didn't turn back to Sundial Mountain, she smiled at me.

"I thought you needed to watch that mountain of yours," she said, dipping her head down and shoving her butt in the air.

"I can see it out of the corner of my eye," I lied.

"Liar," she said, and after moment, moved into a weird sort of saggy lunge. When our eyes met again, she continued. "Come on, Mai," she said. "You don't know how fun Yoga is until you try it!"

I doubted that very much.

"I'd love to," I lied. "But I was unfortunately born with the condition that would kill me I put my head under my armpit, so I think I'm cursed to remain forever ignorant."

Ty Lee laughed at my entirely serious statement, pushing her legs back together and neatly folding herself in half.

She pulled herself to her feet, and—

"Well, would you look at that," Azula commented from my left. Ty Lee, halfway to God knows what, froze, eyes over my shoulder.

I turned to look back at the island. I had spent more time watching Ty Lee stretch than I had realized, because the sun dial mountain was a lot closer than it had been when I had last seen it. And from this distance, it was clear it was not one kinda weirdly shaped mountain, but two bizarrely shaped mountains. It was as if someone had scooped out the middle two or three hundred feet out of it, leaving two improbably shaped mountains with two enormous cliffs facing each other in its place.

In the valley between the two peaks, there was a platform, two almost invisibly thin walkways leading to two caves in the cliff faces on either side.

"Wu," Azula said, handing off her maps to the soldier that had been tasked with standing behind her within arm's reach and therefore also within throwing-into-the-ocean reach. "Bring us up to that beach. If you screw up and hit the platform, I’ll rip your right arm off.”

I winced, my left hand unconsciously going to my right shoulder.

Wu didn’t wince.

“Of course, Princess,” he said, ducking his head to conceal his scowl.

“Azula,” Ty Lee whined, coming up behind her and draping herself across Azula's back. “That was mean.”

“It was necessary, Ty Lee.” Azula said, shoving Ty Lee off her shoulder. “Wu is an imbecile. If I didn’t let him know the consequences of his actions, then he’d just endlessly fuck everything up.”

Ty Lee looked unhappy, slotting herself in between us as Wu shouted orders behind us.

“You’re too soft, Ty Lee,” Azula said, eyes fastened on the platform as grew later before us. “Not everyone is as capable as you and Mai. Mai, your house had servants, you must have had appropriate ways of disciplining them."

"Oh yeah," I said, meeting Ty Lee's gaze out of the corner of my eyes. "Didn't you see all those one armed servants we had, Ty Lee?"

Ty Lee's gaze danced away from me for a moment, off into the distance, before it snapped back to me, and she smiled a little smile at me that was mostly her baring her teeth.

"Yes, obviously you didn't rip their arms off," Azula said. "You're much too weak for that. But surely you've bathed those knives of yours in the blood of your servants once or twice. You could even do it under their clothes, so that—"

"My blades have never bathed in anyone's blood but my own," I said, interrupting Azula in a moment of truly suicidal stupidity.

Azula was silent for a long moment, her golden gaze boring into me over Ty Lee's head.

"I guess you're both soft," she finally said, turning away. "It's a good thing you have me here to handle managing people you  _ can't _ ."

As she said it, her gaze flicked to Ty Lee, and I turned away. Ty Lee scritched my lower back in a way she probably thought was comforting. The platform before us was closing in on us at a truly uncomfortable speed, and over Ty Lee's head, Azula was flexing her hands for the grisly act she was apparently fully willing to follow through on.

Before she could, the battleship stopped almost impossibly fast, leaving about a foot between where we were and the tower supporting the platform, which was substantially higher than I had been expecting.

"You think you're clever, Wu?" Azula said to the tower, her voice flat, and bitterly cold.

"Of course not, Princess," Wu said, the smugness in his voice not entirely concealed.

Azula turned away from the tower, and began to walk towards Wu. Wu's expression, unlike his voice, completely hid whatever smugness he felt.

"Azula, wait—"

Azula brushed Ty Lee off of her right wrist, came to a stop before Wu, her nose about level with his chest. Azula didn't bother to twist her neck to look at him.

"Get down on your knees, Captain. Do you think it's acceptable for a mere Captain to stand above the Crown Princess of the Fire Nation?"

Slowly, Wu's face twisting like very moved he made pained him, Wu dropped to a knee, now only barely shorter than Azula, his hands white where they were folded around each other on his knee.

The fury in his expression was nowhere near as contained as the smugness had been.

"I would like to remind you, Wu, that I don't need a reason to kill you. You life belongs to me—it is my right, as the Crown Princess of the Fire Nation—and I can do whatever I wish with what is mine."

There was a deafening silence on the ship, with even the clanking and banging of the steam engine curiously silent.

"Tell me you understand, Wu."

Another painful moment of silence.

"I understand."

Azula cocked her head expectantly.

"—Princess," he ground out.

"Tell me that your life belongs to me, Wu."

"My life belongs to you, Princess."

"Tell me I can do whatever I want with you, Wu."

Another painfully long silence, in which Ty Lee began to inch forward, a uncomfortable whine in the back of her throat.

"You can do whatever you want with me—" Wu's face was visibly strained, "—Princess."

Silence fell down upon the deck once more. Azula dropped her hand to Wu's wrist, and pushed back his sleeve.

"Oh my," she said, as a thin bracelet of intricately woven blue and green threads was revealed. "What's this?" She pinched her fingers on it, a puff of smoke rising from her fingertips, and she rose the Wu's broken bracelet in front of his face. "This is against regulations, Wu. But don't worry, Wu—I don't mind." She snapped the bracelet up into a fist. "We better erase the evidence anyways, though." Smoke bled through Azula's fingers, and when she opened her fist, there was nothing there but ash. She dropped the ash on Wu's fingers. "I just did you a favor, Wu," she said her voice still light, and conversational. "I want you to thank me."

Another silence.

This one longer than the previous ones, Wu's hands on his knee clenched so tightly I could see blood bubble up where the fingernails of his right hand dug into his left hand.

"Thank you, Princess."

"You're welcome, Wu," she said, her voice light, and some approximation of happy. She ducked down to meet his eyes. "Just don't forget— _ you belong to me _ ."

With that, Azula spun on her heel, and walked back towards us, a soft smile curling at her lips, her eyes half-lidded.

"Well then," she said, lightly, either not noticing or choosing to ignore how much closer Ty Lee was to her than she had been. "Now that that's done with—let's go."

The platform was at least two stories above us, so of course Azula elected to leap up onto it. After she just barely made it, hitting the side of the platform and having to pull herself up, Ty Lee, of course, followed suit, jumping to the tower that held the platform up and then running up the tower for an improbably long time before pulling herself up onto the platform beside Azula.

They both turned to me, gazes expectant.

“You realize I can’t do that, right?” I said.

“I believe in you!” Ty Lee said, unhelpfully.

“It’s important to understand that there are some things that other people just can’t do,” Azula said, equally unhelpfully. She turned down to me, and gave me a false smile. “We’ll wait,” she said, glancing at the caves on either side of her. “Take your time.”

“It’s not like you’re standing in front of a dragon nest or anything,” I muttered as Azula and Ty Lee moved towards the middle of the platform, out of view. “No rush.”

I turned back to the rest of the deck, and stopped at the sight of Wu, halfway across the deck. His face was completely twisted into a furious mask, and there was murder in his eyes. I stepped back instinctively, and he snorted out a sneering laugh.

He scrubbed his face with his hands, and when his hands left his face, the fury was gone from his face. When he spoke his voice was tired.

"What do you need, Lady Mai?"

I paused, and glanced behind me. The platform Azula and Ty Lee were standing on had a set of stairs that led down to a large arena-like space, but there was a cliff standing between that space and the sandy alcove the tower holding up the platform stood on. The cliff wasn't anything as egregious as the two cliffs that led from the sandy alcove all the way up the peaks of the two mountains, but it didn't look particularly traverseable.

I turned back to Wu.

"I don't know, Captain," I told him. "Can you get me up onto that platform?"

Wu looked at me for a second, and then shook his head with a sigh.

"Yeah," he said, spinning his hand in a circle to gather a group of soldiers around him. "Ready the third catapult," he said. "Open the vault."

The soldiers scattered like he had actually said something comprehensible. He directed me to walk before him to the foot of the third catapult.

"We're going to tie a rope to a two hundred pound rock, and then fire that rock over that walkway right there." He pointed. "It looks sturdy enough, so it should be able to handle your weight fine. The rope might feel like it's giving a little, but if you go slow, you should be able to climb it just fine." He paused, and then continued. "How does that sound, Lady Mai?"

"Fantastic," I said.

He looked at me for a moment, trying to determine if I was being sarcastic or not. 

“Great,” he said. “After you get up there, let us know, and we’ll release it on our side. It shouldn't be under tension, so it shouldn't whip out on your side, but keep a little distance, just in case.”

“Understood.”

As we waited, the captain's hand went to his wrist, and he rubbed the faint tan line he had there.

“I’m sorry about your bracelet,” I said. “Also, you know, everything else.”

Wu was silent for a good thirty seconds—long enough I no longer expected him to answer.

“My sister made it―she had a little shop in Caldera, she mainly sold little trinkets to tourists." He pulled his hand away from his wrist, and let his hands fall to his sides. "I was her first customer, and I bought the kitchiest thing in the shop, which was that bracelet."

I turned to glance at him.

"She died," he said. "Six years ago. She and her lover threw themselves off of the Lover's bridge."

"I'm sorry for your loss."

"Don't be," he said, turning away to face the hole opening in the ship's deck. "I was the one who killed her."

The new hole in the deck led down into a room I had never seen, filled with rocks of various sizes, some clean and others black and smeared with what was probably a flammable tar. Wu directed them to a medium-sized rock that was substantially smaller than I expected: only about two and a half feet wide. They tied a thick, sturdy rope to it, and tied the other side to the railing of the ship.

They loaded the catapult, and the deck shook as the catapult slammed into motion, and the rock flew off into the air. It easily cleared the walkway, and then fell down, down, down into the sandy alcove below, where it landed with a weak sounding thump. As I looked down, I noticed there was already a group of soldiers nearing the rock, presumably to bring back into the hole in the deck behind me.

"They'll hold onto the rock, which should make it an easier climb," Wu intoned from behind me.

"Thank you, Captain," I said.

"It's no problem, my Lady," he said from behind me. "It's not like we have anything better to be doing."

I walked to the railing, and hesitated. I glanced back at Wu behind me. He was alone, none of the soldiers close.

"What Azula didn't wasn't your fault," I said. "Even if you could have stopped it, it wasn't your fault. It was Azula's fault."

He blinked.

"Yes, my Lady. I know. She's not my first sadistic superior officer."

"Oh," I said, turning back to the railing. I pulled at the rope falling before me until I ran out of slack. 

"What she did wasn't your fault either, Lady Mai," he said to my back.

"Yes, Captain," I lied. "I know."

The rope was a more unpleasant to climb than I had been expecting. It slipped, just a little, each time I pulled myself up. It was like trying to climb sand.

I climbed it regardless, pulling myself up onto the walkway and uncomfortably close to the dragon nest, and spread my hands to Azula and Ty Lee, who were both staring at me.

"Ta da," I said. I moved away from the rope, and shouted "I'm clear," down to the boat.

Azula snorted. "You needed Wu's help?"

I closed the distance between us as I heard the rope slithering over the walkway behind us.

"The first rule of being a noble," I said, "is to never do anything yourself when you can get someone else to do it for you."

"I thought you were better than that," Azula said, walking forward to meet me, and then walking past me.

"Azula, you're not going—"

"Wait here," Azula ordered.

"You made Mai get up here just to tell us—"

"If I require your assistance, I want you close," Azula interrupted. "But  _ stay here _ ."

Ty Lee fell silent. Azula continued down the walkway towards the cave alone. She stepped on the rope as she passed it, leaving a black scorch mark on its surface because she was petty like that.

She vanished into the cave at about the same moment the last of the rope slipped over the edge of the walkway, and went tumbling down the other side. I could just barely hear the scrambling of the soldiers on the ground to avoid the several hundred feet of falling rope.

I turned to Ty Lee, who looked anxious.

"Don't tell me you actually expect Azula to find a dragon here," I said.

"But look!" Ty Lee said, pointing at the ground beneath my feet.

I looked down, and found I was standing in a patch of scorched stone as wide as I was tall. It was new enough that you could see my footsteps in the scorch mark from where they had scratched off the blackness of the scorch mark into a paler grey.

I looked back at the cave Azula had walked into, and then at the cave behind me, now substantially more worried about what would come out of that cave.

I stepped out of the scorch mark.

"Great," I said. "Of course Azula would be the first person in like fifty years to actually be able to find a dragon."

"I thought you were bored in Ningde?" Ty Lee said, smiling a nervous smile.

"Better bored than dead."

Ty Lee giggled at me, giving me that same nervous, teeth-bared smile. I stepped a little closer to her, a little further from the scorch mark, and slipped two knives into each hand.

"Ooh," Ty Lee said. "Are you going to throw those into its eyes?"

I was certainly going to try, but I wasn't too confident about how successful I'd be. Dragons were fast, mean, and had scaled eyelids.

"That's the idea."

"Gotta earn back your grandpa's honor!"

"Great grandfather," I corrected.

Silence fell between us. It was taught, awkward, and uncomfortable.

Azula emerged from the cave, and no dragon followed her.

"They were here recently," she said as she approached. "There was raw meat in there, and it's not rotting yet." 

I shook off the shiver that sent down my back.

"Great," I said, as Ty Lee said "I'm so happy for you!"

Azula hmphed instead of responding, passing us and vanishing into the other cave.

"Told you so," I said after Azula had vanished.

"What!" Ty Lee protested. "You were more scared than I was! Look at those knives!"

"What knives?" I asked, spreading my empty hands before her.

Ty Lee made a scrunchy angry face, and grabbed my hands, interlacing our fingers and holding my hands tight.

Once she was finished, she grinned.

"I win!"

"What do you win?" I asked, glancing at the cave currently holding Azula and possibly a several ton dragon.

"I've got your hands!"

I waited for her to continue, but I was left disappointed.

"Okay," I said, deciding it was easier to wait for Ty Lee to get bored of having both of her hands occupied than try to convince her to let me go.

Sure enough, twenty seconds later, Ty Lee released my hands, and bent backwards into a handstand, feet pointed straight up. She waddled around to face me, and grinned.

"Very nice," I said, folding my hands into my sleeves before me and retrieving my knives once more.

She hopped between her hands happily, and then flipped to her feet, did a twisting backflip, and struck a pose.

I clapped the best I could around the knives in my hands.

Before Ty Lee could get bored again and look for something new to play with, Azula re-appeared at the mouth of the cave, and walked towards us. "This one's empty, too," she said, frowning. She gave Ty Lee's posing a quizzical glance before she continued.

"They must have known we were coming."

"Maybe they're just out hunting, Princess?"

I returned my knives to their sheathes once more, and let my hands fall by my sides.

"That's an awfully big coincidence," Azula said, glaring down at the battleship behind me, and, by extension, at my knees.

I took a step to the left.

"By the time they could have seen us, we should have been able to see them leave," I said.

"I know," Azula said, turning to the stone buildings we could just barely see in the distance. "Dragons don't set up watches to watch for incoming ships," she said, cocking her head as she turned back to us, "but humans do."

Ty Lee made an excited noise. "The Sun Warriors!" she confidently declared.

Azula turned back to the tower in the distance, and then dropped her gaze to the stone beneath our feet. Writ large, occasionally marred by black and grey scorch marks, was a carving of two dragons, one red and one blue, their bodies curled around each other in stiff, rectangular edges.

"You know, Ty Lee," Azula said. "You just might be right."

Ty Lee smiled, from ear to ear.

"Mai, why don't you tell your new best friend that we'll be going to visit these sun warriors, and show them what happens when you decide to act against the fire Nation."

I hesitated, but a cool gaze from Azula sent me on my way. I walked to the edge of the platform, and looked down on the deck.

"Captain?" I shout-asked down to the deck below.

"Yes, Lady Mai?" Wu responded, emerging from behind the control tower.

"We'll be heading further into the island, to see if there are any residents."

Wu nodded.

"Understood, my lady. We'll begin setting up camp, and see if we can do something about that cliff so that we don't have to jump."

"Thank you, Captain, I appreciate it."

I turned back to Azula and Ty Lee, and found Azula scowling at me.

"You make me sick," she informed me.

"I live to serve."

Ty Lee coughed out a laugh, and Azula rolled her eyes.

"Okay!" Ty Lee said. "Let's go meet the sun warriors!"

She ran off down the stairs, and Azula and I were alone for about a second before Azula realized there was someone walking in front of her, and did her best to rectify it while trying to look like she didn't care, and was just taking a leisurely run. 

This effectively resulted in both Ty Lee and Azula running off and out of sight like children, and leaving me with the option of either being left behind or running after them. I weighed my desire to not run against the likelihood of Azula killing me for slowing her down, looked up to the sun, and decided today was a good day to die.

The steps were well maintained, and reasonably spaced, which was a pleasant surprise. Each step had a carving just as intricate as the carving that had been present on the platform. On the right side of the stairs was a red dragon, on the left a blue dragon, and as I walked down the stairs, I slowly walked down their bodies.

I chose the red dragon, because walking on fire nation tapestries was illegal.

I stepped out into the area that was, at this distance, very clearly an arena. In the center was a slightly raised platform of stone, surrounded on all sides by packed dirt, groomed into neat concentric circles, broken only by Azula and Ty Lee's footsteps.

The opposite side of the arena was a wall of rocky crags, with only a narrow gap between two almost perfectly mirrored crags. As I walked across the arena, I glanced back at the two equally mirrored peaks behind me.

If I didn't know better, I'd think that this was created by earthbenders. A split mountain, an arena carved into unforgiving rock, a path with such neat, elegant framing. It didn't look natural, it didn't feel natural.

I stepped between the crags, and began to walk down a narrow and unnecessarily shadowed path. The stairs here were as well maintained as the steps up the platform behind me had been, although they were missing the intricate carvings.

After descending what felt like about a thousand feet, I stepped out from between two equally matched, equally elegant crags, and into the jungle. The path that had led up the mountain continued here, although the stones showed substantially more wear, the wide flagstones grown, stones that had likely once been flush together now often close to half a foot apart, occasionally large enough for small ferns to grow out of the cracks.

The city was further away than it had looked from the platform. I spent a good ten minutes walking at my own pace, although it had probably been an awful lot shorter for Azula and Ty Lee, wherever it was they were before me.

I could occasionally hear them shout at each other, but their voices were muffled by the distance and the heavy fern leaves that fell over the path that either made me duck beneath them or take a fern leaf the the face.

It was a close thing, and I gave both options a try, before deciding that really, fern leaves weren’t so bad after all.

The logical conclusion to the city being further away than they had looked from the sea only occurred to me once I had been forced to walk around a tree that had grown between the stones along up the path, and I could see it properly.

The city wasn't just further away than they had looked from the sea, it was much,  _ much  _ larger.

What lay before me wasn't a shrine, or a small stone village—it was a enormous, overgrown city. The path I was on extended up to a pyramid of mind-boggling proportions, and I couldn't see the jungle on either side of it.

It was larger than any city I'd ever seen, save one, but it was empty.

It was empty, and silent. I could hear no children in the streets, no shopkeepers pimping their wears, and no couples screaming behind closed doors. If there had been sun warriors in this city, they had fled with the dragons.

I didn't like it.

I looked up at the two enormous towers that framed the entrance to the path, and were currently looming over me, and also occasionally ejecting dust down upon me.

As I moved out of the tower's shadow, the shadows in the tower's windows, the shadows in the open doors of the houses, watched me. The overgrown stone carved out irregular shadows that moved unpredictably with the wind and the sun and my own movements, dancing out of the corners of my eyes as I moved, but motionless when I came to a stop.

Azula and Ty Lee were nowhere to be found. The road before me was deserted, up to the pyramid, and the cross street I currently stood on was empty as far I could see, the shadowed houses around me silent.

I belatedly realized that I couldn't hear Ty Lee and Azula shouting at each other, any more.

I moved to take a step forward, and then stopped. I was very suddenly and probably very irrationally terrified of taking another step.

Where were Ty Lee and Azula? There were no stone flagstones here, just hard-packed dirt. Hard packed enough it wasn't groomed at all. The overgrowth on the houses was clear from the ground all around me.

I took a step back, and then another. I kept on going until my back was to the massive tree that hidden the pyramid from my view as I had approached.

My heart was doing its best to beat out of my chest.

I was being paranoid, I told myself. Azula and Ty Lee had just taken that right, all the way up there. They were close enough, Ty Lee didn't have to shout (because Ty Lee needed an excuse to shout). This was silly.

I was being paranoid.

I tried to take a step forward, back out into the city, but my legs refused to budge.

"Azula," I said, failing to raise my my voice. "Ty Lee," I continued, not shouting.

No answer came, because only the army of ants swirling angrily around my feet could hear me.

I cleared my throat, swallowed, and looked down at the ants doing their best to eat my shoes.

Leading out from my feet were footsteps—faint, but just barely visible. The dirt here wasn't as loose as it had been in the arena, but it wasn’t as tight as I had thought.

I crouched down, and pulled out a knife to sweep away the ants covering the ground without disturbing the dirt.

Sure enough, to my right was another set of footprints, and to my left a third set of footprints. I followed the second set out into the area before me with my eyes, each footprint just enough information to help me make out the next. 

These footprints were rather obviously Ty Lee's, walking in anything but a straight line, walking from one side of the road back to the other, occasionally drawing lazy circles, until, finally—

I wasn't able to find the next footprint.

It's fine.

Everything was fine.

I switched to Azula's footprint, was able to find their very comfortingly line ten feet out, thirty feet out, and then—

Nothing.

Alright.

Alright, cool.

Everything was fine.

I hated the Sun Warriors, but hey, that wasn't anything new.

I followed beside Ty Lee's footprints out until they disappeared, and stopped about ten feet behind where the last one I could find from from the tree.

It was deeper, and more smudged than the others. From here, I could find one more, a footprint halfway between Azula's last footprint and this one, narrow and deep.

Almost like Ty Lee jumped after Azula.

The city wasn't quite as quiet now. I could just barely hear... something. Muffled shouting, almost.

Great. 

Amazing.

Great.

I very cautiously moved towards Azula's last footprint, and crouched down about five feet behind it.

This close, I could see it was only half formed—only Azula's heel was visible in the dirt, a neat line drawn in the footprint about an four inches from the back of her boots. That line continued outside of Azula's footprint, a little patch of dirt that was packed harder than the dirt around it.

I could see the right and left side, but couldn't quite make out the back side. Azula's footstep probably cleared the dirt on this side of the conspicuously hard dirt, but left the other side untouched.

I untied my sword from my back (it might as well be good for something), and worked myself closer to the conspicuously hard patch of dirt. When it was just barely close enough, I reached out my sword, and poked it.

It didn't give, so I upped the pressure little by little until it suddenly gave quite a bit and I made a fool of myself scrambling away as fast as I could.

The ground did not swallow me up, the hard little patch of dirt rising back up, now even more defined from its softer surroundings.

I unsheathed the sword, and very carefully scraped out an X on its surface. I backed away, heart still pounding. I'd be happy with about fifteen feet. That seemed like a safe—

My foot caught on a wire, and I threw myself to the ground a millisecond before the area where I had been standing was punctured by no less than five arrows.

I really hated the Sun Warriors, I decided from where I lay in the dirt.

I was pretty sure Azula could get out herself. I was pretty sure she didn't need my help.

She had Ty Lee.

In response to my hopeful thinking, the ground beneath me shook like a Badger Mole having temper tantrum.

I glanced down to where Azula and Ty Lee had vanished, and found the packed dirt that had apparently swallowed them up completely unchanged.

Awesome.

I stood, picked up my sword from where I had thrown it in my flailings to avoid death, and threw a knife through the wire that Azula, Ty Lee and I had all managed to step over. I walked back to the conspicuously hard patch of dirt, glanced down at it, and then slammed the hilt of my sword into a patch of dirt beside it three times.

The muffled shouting from beyond it rose in volume, and then the ground shook so hard I almost fell onto the conspicuously hard patch of dirt.

Thanks, Azula.

I stepped a good ten feet back from the trigger dirt, and through a knife at it.

It didn't work, but I tried two more times to be sure.

I walked back to the death dirt, returned my knives to my sheathes, moved myself back out of the death zone. I pulled off my vest, and heaved it into the air, as high as I could.

It came crashing down onto the death dirt with a jangling crash, but the earth did not open to swallow it up. I walked back to the death dirt, retrieved my vest, pulling it back on.

I looked around, at the low stone houses lining the road on either side, the massive pyramid before me, the cross road behind me, and then back at the two towers towering above me.

The muffled shouting beneath me changed timbre, sounding less like someone shouting and more like someone trying to hack their lungs out.

I couldn't see any smoke seeping out of the ground anywhere, which, of course, meant—

I ran to the tower, and made myself a ladder. Climbing knives isn't fun, but with good enough knives, and some practice, it is possible.

I only cut myself twice as I climbed up the tower, which is pretty good, all things considered, and had a terrifying moment when I stepped out onto the roof of the tower when I imagined the tower's floor opening up and dropping me to my death the moment I set foot on it.

Thankfully, no such thing occurred.

I looked over the edge of the tower, and squinted down at the ground while I clenched my right hand in my pants to quench the bleeding in my index and pinky fingers.

I could see the x I had carved into the death dirt, just barely. I was probably about thirty feet away, which was a little bit more than I had been hoping. I pulled my sword out of my mouth, looked at it, and then took off my vest instead.

This time, I tied it into as compact a shape as I could, took aim, and then lobbed my vest off of the tower. It took one second, two seconds to fall, and then hit the ground with a crash.

The ground gave. Over a hundred square feet of the road opened up to swallow it whole, and I swallowed uncomfortably as I thought of how close I had been to the death dirt when I had thrown my vest the first time.

A truly unholy amount of smoke was regurgitated back into the air in a toxic black cloud, and light spilled down into a blackened mess, revealing one surprised face, and one crumpled pink figure.

Azula blinked at the sudden light, swiped away the ball my vest had become by instinct, but by the time her eyes sharpened with realization, the ground was already closing in above her. 

There was a moment in which real, actual fear shone in Azula's eyes, but then those eyes were gone, the road closing back over her as quickly as it had parted.

I turned away from the ground, and grabbed my sword from where it leaned against the wall of the tower beside me, readying myself to throw it as well, but was interrupted by what I could only describe as an animal roar.

I turned back to the ground just in time to see the trap levered back open by a red-faced Azula, one hand on each of lip of the trap. Her teeth were gritted, her eyes wild, and her hair, for once, something other than perfect. Her head was twisted an uncomfortable 120 degress over her shoulder as she shouted behind her.

"Ty Lee!" she shouted, her voice strained. "Go—" her voice broke as her arms shuddered.

A strikingly pale faced Ty Lee appeared on the wall behind Azula, one arm tucked around her midsection as she slowly dragged herself from the trap.

The tremors in Azula's grew more frequent, Ty Lee's arm faltered, Azula screamed, and—

I jumped.

Two seconds is an awful lot faster when it's you that's falling, and not your vest.

I crashed into the road about ten feet from Azula and Ty Lee's imminent death, rolled broken legs into a severely bruised back, and caught Ty Lee as she fell, hauling her out and back on the dirt beside me.

Wild golden eyes stared back at me, and Azula gave one last scream before flinging herself out from between the lips of the trap, and allowing them to crash closed beneath her.

She crashed back into the road about an inch from the death dirt, and I took a moment to double check that if Azula got up in the wrong way, I was not sitting on the now invisible lips of trap, before making Azula aware of her current precarious position.

"Azula, don't move."

Crazed golden eyes met mine, and Azula bared her teeth at me like the fire breathing lizard she was.

My life briefly flashed before my eyes. It didn't take long, because not a lot had happened it.

Once it had finished, I said, "The trigger for the trap is about an inch from your left hand."

Azula looked down, and once I was freed from her murder gaze, I looked down at Ty Lee. She did her best to smile at me.

"Hi Mai," she said, her voice weak. "Fancy seeing you here."

I moved her hand from where she was pressing it to her midsection, and immediately regretted my decision.

"I slipped," Ty Lee said, moving her hand back over the jagged gash in her side. "It's just a scratch—I'll be fine."

I glanced to my left, where Azula had risen to her feet, and was glaring at the x I had drawn in the death dirt like it had personally wronged her, which I suppose that it had. Azula was, aside from a bit of dirt, untouched.

I looked back at Ty Lee.

"Did you—"

Ty Lee shook her head.

"I slipped," she repeated.

The ground shook, very suddenly, and I glanced back at where Azula was now punching the road, her eyes wild, and her face angry and murderous like I had never seen. Again, and again and again. Ty Lee groaned in pain, as the ground shook under Azula's barrage, but Azula either didn't hear her or didn't care.

Azula leapt into the air, and crashed into the ground with a scream and a ear-splitting crack of breaking stone, despite the fact the road was made of packed dirt. The ground shook but ultimately held firm, Ty Lee groaned, and Azula shot into the air again, this time leaving black scorch marks on the dirt.

I watched Azula as she flew into the air, red flames at her heels, carrying her higher and higher, until she was above the tower, and then higher still.

She finally came to a stop, slowly flipped, and then came barreling back down again, black smoke filling the air above her, burning red flames like furnaces on each of her heels.

I turned away, laying my body over Ty Lee's, and closing my eyes.

For a moment there was silence, just too long of a moment that made me wonder—

And then the world was fire and noise. For a moment, my ears felt like they had been split in two, and my skin felt like it was on fire.

And then it was over. The only noise left was my ears ringing, and the only heat the Fire-Nation-standard swelteringly hot sun.

I levered myself off of Ty Lee, and hesitated.

Before I could look behind me, a very familiar weight thudded against my back. It slid off my back, and I glanced behind me to see my vest behind me, remarkably intact. Above it stood Azula, clothes and skin streaked with black, but hair back to obnoxious imperfection, her face once again cold, and impassive. Behind her, the pit trap that held her and Ty Lee was now exposed to the light, a black smoking ruin.

"I believe that's yours," Azula said, kicking my vest back into me.

"Thank you, Princess," I said.

She smiled her cold princess smile that sent unpleasant chills down my spine. "Now, move."

I turned to follow her gaze, and saw Ty Lee, her gaze blank and unfocused, staring somewhere above us both, her chest quivering with each breath.

I moved, and Azula knelt in my place, sliding her hands under Ty Lee's back and knees before pulling Ty Lee into her chest. Ty Lee's head lolled uncomfortably far back, and I reached forward to catch it and lean it against Azula's chest.

Azula, of course, ignored me, and I pulled my hand back.

She took a step forward, and I reached out to stop her. "Princess, wait—"

Her second step hit the ground with a flash of red flame, and she rocketed into the air, clearing the distance to the path in a single incomprehensibly long bound.

She didn't crash into the ground so much as float back down onto it, red flames once again igniting under her feet as she neared the ground, easing her descent until she alighted on the ground with a whisper. She paused for a moment before the tree that stood at the opening of the path. She cocked her head, twisting it only far enough for me to see the curve of her cheek, but not far enough for her to see me.

"What are you waiting for?"

"I—" I hesitated. "I have to retrieve my knives," I said.

Azula snorted derisively.

"Don't dawdle," she said, and then she ducked under the tree, and out of sight.

I stood there for at least a minute, staring at the branch Azula had ducked under before I started to shake. It started in my fingers, a little quivering, then made its way to my hands, ignoring my attempts at fists to shake it away, before racing its way up my shoulders, and then very suddenly my entire body, dropping me unceremoniously to the ground.

I lay there, face planted onto the ground, shaking, for what I'd estimate at about fifty days before my body would listen to my commands again.

Everything was fine, I told myself.

I was still alive, everyone was still alive.

Everything was fine.

I slowly pushed myself back up to my feet, wincing at the pain in my knees, which had heroically taken the fall for my face, which I appreciated. I looked at the branch Azula had ducked under, and then looked back at the smoking ruin that had once been a trap. The floor was covered covered in broken and charred spikes that were not nearly burned enough to hide what their original purpose had been. On the base of the wall, most of the way to the other end of the pit, was a bright red handprint, high enough to be unobscured by the ashes that now filled the bottom of the pit.

I leaned down, and picked up my vest, checked it for obvious holes, and upon finding none, I slapped the obvious ash from it, and pulled it on.

I climbed my makeshift ladder, cut open my left index finger, and re-tied my sword to my back. I climbed back down, pulling each of my knives from the wall as I went, and throwing them at that branch that Azula had ducked under that I seemed unable to stop looking at.

The grout in the tower had been soft enough the knives were mostly untouched, except for the three that were a little bit brown with my own blood.

I made my way slowly back to the path. I reached the tree, cleaned the blood off of three of my knives, and then re-sheathed them. I stopped, looked back at the empty city laid out before me, the glittering shadows that I now knew were out to get me, and then turned away.

It had taken me ten minutes to get through the stone path going to the city, but it took me fifteen minutes to get back. It took me another ten minutes to climb the winding stone staircase. When I stepped out into the open air of the Arena, I almost didn't notice Azula, where she stood in the shadows of the left crag framing the stone stairs.

When I noticed her, our eyes met, and her eyes slowly made their way down my body, cataloging my every flaw for later use, but her eyes got stuck on my hands, and she reversed course.

"Show me your hands," she said, and I weighed showing her my hands against a gruesome death.

I opened my hands before her.

"Do you need someone to hold your hands, Princess?" I said, because I had elected to both show Azula my hands and die a gruesome death.

Azula stared at my hands, ignoring my words, her lips pressed into a thin line as blood slowly tricked from the base of my ring finger.

"Take off your gloves," she said, stepping out of the shadows she had been lurking in, and coming to stand before me.

I stripped off my gloves, and then hesitated. Azula resolved the issue by taking my gloves from my hands, and then tossing them carelessly into the dirt somewhere to her left.

She took my hands in hers, and her hands were uncomfortably warm, like dark wood left in the sun too long. She splayed my hands out for her perusal, all of my uncountable scars on display like she'd never seen them before, which knowing Azula's consideration for other humans, was probably the case.

I looked away from my hands, and looked at the top of her head. It was easy to forget, in the last month, that Azula was shorter than me. She had been taller than me when I'd left, if only just barely, but she wasn't anymore.

Azula pressed her fingers into my scars, and I gritted my teeth in pain. Her fingers touched briefly on the scabbing cuts on my right index finger and pinky, and the still oozing cut on my left ring finger.

"Ow," I said, in a futile attempt to remind her not to poke at other people's open wounds.

"The doctor is looking at Ty Lee right now," Azula said, releasing my hands, but not turning away. "She'll be fine, of course."

"Of course," I parroted.

Azula's face underwent an involuntary muscle spasm that did not break the golden gaze that was baring into me before continuing.

"She's sleeping."

She stared at me, like she expected a response.

"Fantastic," I finally offered, not quite sure what she was expecting of me.

Silence fell heavily between us, and without Ty Lee to itch at the very concept of silence, it stretched, out into a minute, and then two.

"Tomorrow, we'll do a proper survey of the island," Azula said. "And then we'll search out the Sun Warriors, wherever it is they're hiding, and we'll  _ kill every last one of them _ ."

Her golden eyes bored into mine.

"You'll help me with that, won't you Mai?"

She didn't bother with her usual fake smile that Azula smiled when she was telling you something she expected you to like.

"What's an adventure without a little bit of genocide?"

Her hands were once again on mine, her grip painfully tight.

"I knew I was right to bring you with me," she said. Her face twisted with something that could have been mistaken for regret had it been on a human face as she looked down on my scarred hands. "Next time, be more careful." She snapped her gaze away from my scars, and dropped my hands. "Stop damaging what's mine."

I hesitated, not quite sure what to do with that.

"I'll get right on that—I definitely did this on purpose."

Azula nodded at the horizon.

"It's good you understand."

Then, without turning back towards me, she started off towards the far side of the arena, where I could just barely see a rope ladder secured to the ground with long metal spikes. I followed after her, picking my gloves up off the ground where she had thrown them, brushing the dirt off of them, and hesitated for a long moment before stuffing my hands back into them.

The grit of the dirt burned as it dug itself into my cuts and scars.


	9. Book 1 - Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Togged for torture because of this chapter. It's uhhh... it's a lot.
> 
> CW: Torture (from the perspective of the torturer)

The door of the bronze cage I had had installed in the makeshift brig slammed closed behind me, and Azula flinched. I held out a hand, and a black knife formed itself out of the air.

Azula's eyes snapped to it, her face already grimacing from remembered pain.

"Don't make this any harder than it has to be," I said opening my other hand to reveal the vial of sensu venom. She twitched in impotent rage.

I uncorked, it slowly, savoring the moment, as her golden eyes did their best to set me on fire through the force of her will because she couldn't set me on fire with her firebending.

I had never seen a firebender who had been deprived of their element for months on end—years on end. It was a shame I wouldn't get to see what Azula became, if the weeks I had her on sensu venom became months, years—

_ Decades _ .

I smiled at the very thought of Azula, driven mad by her eternal lack of firebending. I could give it back to her, just for a day, and then take it away again.

There was still time—maybe I could find a new sacrifice.

Azula, at that moment, decided that I wasn't paying enough attention, and surged towards me.

What she hoped to accomplish is beyond me, the sensu venom I dosed her with this morning not liable to wear off for another twelve hours at least, the door locked behind me.

But no one has ever accused firebenders of being smart.

I danced away from her clumsy lurch in my general direction, and drove my knife deep into her midsection.

She crumpled to the ground, screaming in agony.

"Why do you have to make this so hard, Azula?"

She bit off her scream, face red with the effort of it, and tried to push herself to her knees, but I conjured a second black blade to my hand and drove it into her back before she could.

Her arms gave out beneath her, and she lost the war with the agony she had been biting back.

I laughed at the beautiful melody of her screams.

I leaned down, conjuring a third blade, and spoke into her ear, so that she could hear me over her screams—

"I'm so sorry," I said. "But I can't allow such an unprovoked attack on your emperor go unpunished." I dripped five drops of sensu venom onto my blade, recorked the sensu venom, and tossed it back through the bars to Toriko. "But consider yourself lucky—imagine what would have happened if you succeeded. Don't you remember what I did to your  _ father _ ?"

Pain like fire blazed through my thigh, and I was suddenly on my knees, Azula looming over me, my own blade in her hand.

"I'll never forget," she hissed, and my head clanged painfully into the bars as I only just barely managed to avoid taking my own blade to the heart, taking it to the stomach instead.

There was nowhere to move behind me, and the pain from my own blades was making it hard for me to think. I had forgotten what pain had felt like in the years I had willfully gone without it. I could deal with this, I just needed—

Azula slammed me into the bars behind me, my head slamming back into the bars, splitting my vision into four. I was standing suddenly, held up my Azula's hands on my neck, and I couldn't breathe.

My scrambled at the hands on my throat, but her fingers didn't budge. My vision started to go dark around the edges, my vision narrowing onto the brutal smile like a slash across Azula's face.

My vision flickered, thought deserting me, but then an ice cold numbness slashed through my back, and into my heart. My brain cleared of pain, and my eyes opened.

The blades in my stomach and thigh dripped away, and I deposited two new knives in Azula's stomach. 

Her grip spasmed, but she didn't release me, so I deposited the next two knives in her wrists.

Her hands spasmed again, but this time, they didn't reattach themselves to my neck. I crumpled without the support of her hands on my neck into a rather embarrassing heap. Azula screamed as the ever obedient Toriko filled her with four more knives, now that I was no longer in the way.

I stood, with some difficulty, and checked myself for wounds. I twisted to pull the knife Toriko had used to bring me back to my senses out my back. From it, I felt a calm, numbing chill, unlike the burning cold of the knives I used on Azula.

I looked down at her squirming pathetically as she tried to pull the knives from her body with hands that could just barely go a second with spasming.

I tossed the knife back to Toriko. "Now I remember why I keep you around," I said, and she bowed her head, a wry smile twisting at her lips.

I knelt down, and picked up the knife I had dropped in the struggle. It was mostly intact, and I brought it to my nose to check that the sensu venom hadn't gotten wiped way in the chaos.

The sweetness burned my nostrils, and I smiled. I knelt down beside Azula, and examined her for any extra space to fit another knife. There wasn't much room on her chest what with the six knives that Toriko had cooperatively stabbed her with.

As I was looking, her eyes came alive, flickering in my general direction, but never quite focusing on me.

"Let's give you something else you'll never forget," I said. As I said it, my throat protested, straining against the ten already forming bruises, and I smiled, now knowing exactly where to deposit my poisoned knife.

Part of Azula must have realized what I was planning on doing, because she stopped trying to scrape the knives from her wrists, and tried to raise them to defend herself.

I brushed them aside, and drove the poisoned knife into her neck.

She screamed, but it came out as a sort of pitiful whistle around the vertical knife in her throat.

I checked to make sure she could still breathe, holding my hand in front of her mouth to check for breath, before standing, and turning back to Toriko, who obediently opened the door of the cage.

Her black eyes drifted to where Azula was still trying to do her best to scream behind me, her smile uncharacteristically conflicted.

"Are you sure that's the best idea, your majesty?" she asked. "I'm sure you remember what happened to her father?"

I did indeed, but—

"We only need her alive," I said. "Not functional."

Toriko considered this for a moment, her gaze sliding back over to where Azula lay in the cage behind me, and then smiled a smile that showed all of her crooked teeth.

"Of course," she said. "My mistake."


	10. Book 1 - Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I believe this is the most egregious "chapter" I have. It has 3 separate scene breaks in it and is 12,000 words long XD

I opened my eyes, heart pounding in my chest. My hands shook, and as I tried to push my blanket off of me, they got helplessly caught in it instead. I wrestled with it for what I conservatively estimated to be about two days before I could tear my hands free, and free myself from the blanket that had also wrapped itself around my legs.

After another week, I was free enough I could stand, and did so. It was not as dark in the tent as it had been on the ship, and I could see just well enough in the dark to make out Azula's sleeping form in the dark, and Ty Lee's empty bedroll.

I almost took a step towards Azula's bedroll before I caught myself.

I turned and left the tent instead, ducking out into the eerily hollow light of the moon. The white sand looked grey under its light, and the ocean before me characteristically black. The boiling tar pit that was the ocean, though, was by far preferable to the jungle and its murder city behind me, so I headed in its direction through the silent, empty camp.

It was, of course, further to the sea than to the cliff, because Azula had picked the tent furthest from the shore. I passed line after line of identical tents, all of them dark and silent, black and lifeless in the moonlight.

I reached the last line of tents, and the second largest tent on the beach (after ours, of course), the line of its cloth door was lined with a wavering orange light.

From beyond it, another wavering orange light illuminating two masked figures approached me. For one awful moment, I couldn't tell if one of them was Li.

Neither of them were, thankfully, and the two soldiers passed me without incident. With one last glance at the light in the captain's tent, I stepped out into the open beach, and made my way down to the shore.

I walked until the sand was damp under my feet, then kept on walking, until the ocean swirled around my feet, still strikingly warm, despite the chill in the air.

I sat down in the mud, and stared out at the ocean.

My hands were still shaking. My ears were still ringing with—

My hands were still shaking.

I tried to clench them into fists, but they didn't cooperate, resisting with little spasms of pain until I stopped trying.

The surf surged up again, now swirling around all of me, instead of just around my feet, and seeping through the last layer of clothes the wet mud hadn't manage to penetrate.

It had been unpleasant around my ankles, and it was no more enjoyable now.

My hands kept on shaking, so I dropped them into the sand on either side of me, kneading the sand and grinding the sand into the sensitive scars on my bare palms.

I tired of staring at the roiling mass that was the ocean, and turned my face all the way up to the moon, where it hung heavy in the sky, almost directly above me.

It looked unnaturally large tonight, but maybe that was just me.

My hands continued to shake.

My heart continued to pound.

"Mai."

I jumped, and then slowly turned behind me.

"What are you doing?" Azula said, and I watched her throat as said it, the small bump in her throat bobbing with her words. "I need you functional tomorrow—I can't have you napping until noon again."

She was wearing a robe that wasn't tied very tightly, hanging open far enough open for me to see the clear, unscarred skin of her chest.

I turned back to the ocean.

"Mai!"

I turned back to her with a start, having mostly forgotten she was there.

"Are you going to ask me why I'm wearing a mask?" Azula asked mockingly, covering her face with a hand.

"No," I said, tearing my gaze away from her unblemished right wrist, which had been revealed by her sleeve falling down to her elbow. 

I didn't want get up, I didn't want to go back to sleep.

I got up anyways, wincing at the delayed squelch as my pants unstuck from my skin.

_ You've been wearing a mask for all the years I've known you _ , I was just barely awake enough to not say.

"You can't keep wandering off just because you've had a little nightmare," Azula said, flipping her hair as she turned. 

My hands, I realized, as I fell into step behind Azula, were no longer shaking, my heart no longer pounding.

There were no guards in sight as we approached the camp, and we passed into the lines of tents without delay.

We passed the captain's tent, red light still filtering out from what passed for a door when all you had were tents, and I hesitated, then stopped.

It took Azula a good ten paces to realize I was no longer behind her, and turn to face me. In the faint moonlight, her resting vacant stare looked all the more inhuman, her face all the more like a porcelain mask.

"Mai," she said, voice flat.

I hesitated, trying to think of a convenient lie.

"The guards failed to stop for me when I was leaving the camp," I said. "They made me wait for them to pass. Someone should inform the captain of their insubordination."

Azula sneered, laughing under her breath.

"Of course, Mai," Azula said. "That's so much like you—you're always a stickler for propriety."

"The peasants need to know their place."

This time, Azula laughed louder.

There was a moment of silence, in which I thought Azula would leave me to speak to the captain, and return to our tent. She, of course, did not, and walked towards me instead.

"Why don't I take care of them for you, then? I'm sure I can make them regret it." Her sneer melted away into that standard carefree my-brother-is-screaming-in-agony smile. She pointed over my shoulder. "Look, that's them right over there."

"Please, Princess, there's no need."

Azula didn't stop.

I watched her walk closer and closer, smile dripping further off her face with every step. My hand twitched at my side, but I couldn't bring myself to move it into her way.

She stopped, shoulder to shoulder with me, facing opposite me.

"There's no need?" she asked. She leaned down to my ear. "You're an awful liar, Mai," she breathed into my ear. "And I've already told the captain about the traps in the ruins, if that's what you're so worried about." She waited another moment, her breath burning my ear. "Don't lie to me, Mai."

"I don't know what you're talking about," I said.

Azula laughed, low and deadly. "Of course you don't." She pulled back, and met me gaze holding it for a moment before turning away.

"But please, if you don't trust me, Mai—go the captain. Tell him all about how some traps caught me. I'm sure you're just itching to tell everyone how you saved the crown princess from some peasant's traps."

_ Not everything's about you, Princess _ , I didn't say.

"That's not why I wanted to talk to the captain, Princess," I said.

Azula sneered disbelievingly, but turned away, regardless. I hesitated, watching her go— _ Azula always lies _ —before following in her footstpes, and walking away from the captain's quarters, red light still burning under the door.

It took me a long time to get to sleep that night, staring up at the featureless black ceiling of the tent. 

The city had showed two ways it could kill, and that night I imagined five more, and masked soldiers being killed by them all.

Azula shook me awake.

"Wake up."

"I'm awake," I said, not actually awake.

"Get ready."

Then, with no further fanfare, Azula left the tent without telling me where she was going.

Five minutes later, when I exited the tent, I found Azula nowhere to be found, of course.

If I was the crown princess, I thought to myself, where would I be?

Trick question, of course.

I would be in my bedroom in my palace in Caldera, being waited on hand and foot.

Empathizing with Azula was hard.

I glanced back at the only white tent in the camp that currently housed Ty Lee and a man who had gotten his hair burned off in a spar gone wrong. I then turned, and glanced back at the second largest tent in the camp.

"I wonder if Azula is with the captain," I said to myself and also maybe Azula if she was secretly stalking me.

No fire nation princesses leapt out of the shadows to inform me of my mistake, so I headed across the camp.

The soldier at the door of the captain's tent straightened as I approached. I reached for the door, and he slid down his spear across the door.

"The captain is—"

I moved his spear, and ducked into the captain's quarters.

Wu's bare chest greeted me.

"Lady Mai," he said, eschewing the equally appropriate  _ my eyes are up here _ . "To what do I owe the pleasure?"

I rose my gaze to meet his gaze.

"Are you aware that the city is trapped?"

Wu drew a black shirt over his rather magnificent chest, a truly unfortunate loss for the world. I turned my gaze to the intricate green and blue pattern of his still spread futon, instead.

"The doctor informed me of what Princess Azula told him when she returned with—" he hesitated for a good five seconds over Ty Lee's lack of title before giving up "—your injured friend."

"Are you aware of what kind of traps we encountered?"

Wu paused.

"No," he said. "Princess Azula didn't inform the doctor of that."

"In that case, allow me," I said, turning away from the intensely overgrown bush that lay beside his bush to meet his golden gaze. "We encountered two types of traps in the ruins in the fifty feet we ventured into the ruins before Ty Lee's injury. There was an arrow trap that was triggered by a tripwire that fired five arrows down the length of the trip wire, and a pit trap that was triggered by a pressure plate opened up about one hundred square feet of the road, so simply triggered the traps with, say, a sword, is not sufficient to keep a trap from injuring you. The tripwire is cut, and the pit trap incurred Princess Azula's ire, so it is now a smoking ruin. I don't know if there are any further traps in the entrance of the city, but be aware. Ty Lee is faster and stronger than every soldier in this camp, and she still got caught."  _ Azula is faster and stronger than every soldier in this camp, and Ty Lee still had to injure herself saving her. _ I looked back at the intensely overgrown bush at his bedside, about ninety percent sure that it was one of those bushes you keep very neatly pruned, to demonstrate how disciplined you are. "Do you have any questions?"

"I have a lot of questions."

"I don't have a lot of time, Azula is waiting on me."

The  _ Azula doesn't know why she's waiting  _ went unsaid.

"In that case, I don't have any questions."

"Great."

I turned away.

"Thank you, Lady Mai," Wu said to my back.

"You're welcome." With one last glance at the overgrown bush at Wu's bedside, I stepped out into the morning sunlight, which was nowhere near as weak as I would like it to be.

Azula was in the medic's tent, crouched beside Ty Lee's bed. The hairless soldier in the bed beside Ty Lee's had his eyes screwed shut tight, and was pretending to be asleep very poorly, but with all of his might.

"I'm fine," Ty Lee was saying, trying to push herself up.

"You're not," Azula said to me, reaching out and pushing Ty Lee back into the bed.

"Tell Azula I'm fine, Mai," Ty Lee appealed.

When I looked at Ty Lee, I could still see her head flopping back, eyes vacant.

"No."

Ty Lee booed me, and Azula stood.

"Rest, Ty Lee," Azula said, standing and approaching me. "I'll tell you when you're well enough to come with us."

Ty Lee booed at Azula's back, which Azula ignored with the ease of a lifetime of practice.

"Bye, Ty Lee," I said, turning to follow Azula out of the tent. "I'm glad you're not dead."

"What happened to your fingers?"

Azula stopped dead at the door of the tent, her hand on the flap. She turned back to me, her golden gaze boring into me.

I turned back to Ty Lee, and spread my hands for her to see, flexing them to show I still could.

"I'm fine," I said. Over my shoulder, the sense of my impending death lessened, while Ty Lee paled.

"Mai—"

"It's not your fault, Ty Lee," I said, slipping my gloves off, and showing her my hands in all their scarred glory. "It's nothing new."

Ty Lee's facial expression cycled through a dozen facial expression before it froze into an uncomfortable frown. I pulled my gloves back on.

"If you say so," she said, looking away.

"I do."

An awkward silence stretched out between us until we reached the Ty Lee Silence Toleration Threshold, and she spoke again.

"Bye, Princess. Bye Mai." She smiled an obviously fake smile, and waved.

"Bye, Ty Lee."

Azula didn't respond, because fire breathing lizards don't believe in greetings.

Azula was silent as we walked towards the shore with what could have been guilt, but obviously wasn't.

"Ty Lee is healing well, of course," she said when we were approaching the small rowboat at the shore, like recovering from blood loss and a wooden spike to the side was a matter of physical strength.

"I'm happy to hear that."

"The pathetic excuse for a medic this ship has says it will take her a month to recover, but she should be back with us in a week." I got into the far side of the rowboat, only narrowly avoiding flipping it. Azula pushed the rowboat off of the shore, and then lept in, almost tossing me into the ocean a second time. "I've already contacted the navy to send us some real medics."

_ I thought Ty Lee would be better in a week _ , I didn't say.

Azula picked up the two paddles when the rowboat began to slow, and settled into a consistent beat that sent us skipping over the waves fast enough that I was sprayed with salt water each time we crashed back into the surf. The dry dock on the battleship was, of course, on the far side of the battleship from the shore, so I got to enjoy the experience of being on a rowboat being turned when it was moving at about sixty miles an hour.

It was a very wet experience. I don't recommend it.

We came to a stop below the dry dock on the side of the ship. Azula didn't move, and didn't speak, so neither did I. I got to just sit there and enjoy the delightful feeling of sweat and seawater mingling as they slowly rolled down my back.

I was so glad I was back in the Fire Nation.

It took about five minutes for a cradle to be dropped down to us, and scoop us up. As we began moving, Azula began to speak.

"How was your meeting with Wu this morning," she asked, smiling her fake, porcelain smile.

"Very productive," I said, not particularly surprised. "We talked about the correct way to prune Saibon Bushes."

Azula rolled her eyes, probably because she had been in his quarters at some point.

"Are you going to get in to Saibon pruning, Mai?"

"Well considering the state of his Saibon bush, I'm already more into Saibon pruning than the Captain is."

Azula snorted.

We reached the dry dock, and Azula pulled herself out of the rowboat and jumped down to metal floor below. The dry dock was filled with no less than seven ships of various sizes, all but two steam powered. Lucky me—I got one of the two ships that could be Azula-powered, guaranteeing it to be a faster and wetter experience than traveling like a civilized human being.

I took the brief moment of respite to check how waterlogged my hair was, and squeeze the water out of my two horns. The answer, it turned out, was  _ quite waterlogged _ , and I now had two long wet patches from my shoulders most of the way down my back.

I waited for the boat to be pulled to a stop before I stepped off. Azula was of course waiting for me.

And by waiting for me, I mean she was standing directly in my way.

I came to a stop about six inches from her face, just barely managing to stop with both of my feet on the metal of the dry dock before Azula. I folded my hands.

I could feel her superheated breath on my nose, could smell nothing but the bitter stench of charred flesh. Azula didn't step back, because she knew I couldn't.

"What did the Captain think of your story about how you saved the crown princess of the fire Nation?" she asked, breath like an occupied house on fire.

"I didn't tell him," I said, doing my best not to gag. "I told him that Ty Lee was caught in the pit trap, and that you destroyed it."

Azula didn't move, staring at me for ten seconds, twenty seconds. Finally she smiled.

"And he believed that?" she said blowing air hot enough to burn all over my face, and choking me in firebender fumes. "You've always been such a terrible liar, Mai."

I tolerated it, and Azula took an action that could have been mistaken for pity, and stepped away from me, allowing me to breathe again.

"Walk next to me," she said, gesturing next to her and turning to walk out of the dry dock while flicking her fair in a perfect, hateful little arc.

We walked through the depths of the ship in silence, down a long, empty corridor, and then up the staircase in the control tower.

The soldier waiting for us was, of course, Li, his mask nowhere to be seen.

Li wasn't even a Lieutenant.

"Welcome aboard, Princess, Lady Mai," he said, inclining his head with just the right amount of deference. "I'll be commanding the ship today in Captain Wu's absence."

"I convinced Wu to let your favorite Private command the ship today," Azula said to the top of his head, smirking.

"You're so thoughtful, Princess," I bit out, and Azula chuckled a low, nasty chuckle.

Li rose his head and met my eyes, and then Azula's. "I understand that we'll be doing a circuit of the island, today. Is that right?"

"And look, he's so polite, too! Should I kill Wu and have Li replace him?"

I closed my hands in my sleeves against the icy blood in my veins.

"Yes," Azula said to Li, who was maintaining a perfectly bland expression while faced with the princess of his country plotting the murder of his commanding officer, because he's never had a facial expression he didn't want to have. "Keep the speed of the battleship under twenty nauts, I don't have any actual maps of this island, and don't want to miss anything."

Li bowed his head again.

"As you will, Princess," he said, and then turned away, shouting orders to the soldiers on the deck that definitely outranked him. 

"You didn't answer my question, Mai," Azula said as we came to a stop on the railing.

"I was hoping if I ignored it for long enough, it would go away," I said instead of actually answering her, because I was pretty sure  _ fuck no _ wouldn't go over super well.

"It won't," Azula said, taking the sheath of maps from yesterday from the soldier who had appeared behind her, and laying them out on the ground. "Eventually, Wu is going to fuck up, and I'm going to kill him." The soldier still standing behind us stiffened, not anywhere near as good as hiding his emotions as Li was. "When that happens, I'm giving you the option to pick his successor. When that happens, do you want Li to succeed him?"

I turned to the soldier behind Azula. "Go away," I said, and he did.

Azula rose her eyebrows at me as I looked around us for Li until I found him at the stern. I turned back to Azula.

"I would rather you promote literally anyone but him."

Azula hummed in response, a smile playing with her lips. She held my gaze for a long moment before she turned back to the island. While we had been speaking, the ship had started moving, and was now far enough from the twin peaks you could only just barely tell they were twinned.

Azula crouched down and began to take notes on the third map I didn't bother to read.

"I thought you liked Li," Azula said. "You even named the Mongoose Lizard I gave you after him."

"Children shouldn't be allowed to name things."

"Grandpa’s mongoose lizard's name was Spiky, it's a rite of passage," Azula said, continuing to scratch out notes on the maps before her, occasionally glancing at the coastline.

I stared down at the top of Azula's head, marveling at how symmetrical she managed to tie her hair without a mirror.

"I'm not going to forget, Mai," Azula said, her voice still perfectly even.

"Li is just a private, please promote someone who actually deserves the job."

"Since when have you cared about minutiae like that?" Azula asked.

"Since a month ago, when I put my life in their hands."

Azula twisted her head to took up at me.

"Come down here," she said, tiring of having to look up at another human being.

I sat down, back to the railing, legs out in front of me.

Azula twitched an eyebrow at my lack of decorum.

"Ty Lee is rubbing off on me," I explained, covering a yawn with a sleeve.

Azula rolled her eyes, and looked back to the island.

"You're worried that if I promote Li, I'll eventually kill him," Azula said, taking a note, and not looking at me. "Aren't you?"

When I failed to respond, she turned her gaze to me, and her golden gaze bored into me.

"Don't be silly, Mai," she said, her lips smiling but her eyes not smiling. "I would never do that to you—what kind of monster do you think I am?"

She turned back to the island, scratched out some more notes.

"Well, unless you did something particularly terrible, but—" she turned to me, her eyes still not smiling. "You've always been so good, Mai. You're not planning on anything that would me have to punish you, are you, Mai?" Her voice was ice cold, but she was still pretending to smile.

"I would never dream of it, Princess."

"Then you have nothing to worry about, even if I do make him captain," Azula said. "And besides, if you did, Li not being captain wouldn't save him."

I looked up at the sky, and curled shaking hands into fists in my sleeves.

Out of the corner of my eye, I could see Azula smile a real smile, her eyes crinkling with pleasure.

I breathed through the pounding in my chest. It took a long time for the shaking in my hands and the pounding of my heart to pass, and I lowered my gaze back to the deck before me.

Li was halfway across the deck, looking at me with concern. I met his gaze for just a moment too long, and Azula turned back towards him.

"Aw, look at that," Azula said her voice poisonously saccharine, turning back to the island. "He's worried about you. How  _ sweet _ ."

I drew a knife from my sheathe, and began to pick at my fingernails. I glanced up, and sure enough, Li turned away with an uncomfortable grimace.

I returned the knife to its sheathe, and folded my hands in my lap.

Li never liked my knives.

"Does he know about your little crush, Mai?"

I slid a dry glance over at Azula. "You know me, Princess, master of subtlety."

Azula chuckled a there-are-people-in-pain laugh.

"It took Zuzu forever to catch on, didn't it?" She took some more notes, shaking her head. "Such an imbecile." Another glance at the valley, another note. She was on her second, or maybe her third page. "Li, at least, seems more competent than Zuzu was. What's his house?"

"Feng."

Azula snorted. 

"Well I guess, he'd have to be, with a birth like that. You sure know how to pick 'em, Mai."

"Thanks, Princess. I try."

Azula turned back to her notes, her bang falling free from her ear and sweeping across her cheek before it came to rest on the corner of her lips. With a careless hand, she brushed it back behind her ear.

I turned back to the unending blue of the ocean on the other side of the ship.  _ Yeah,  _ I thought,  _ I sure know how to pick 'em _ .

Silence fell between us, and without Ty Lee to fill every gap with meaningless chatter, it stretched.

I slipped a knife from a sheath, drawing Azula's gaze for a one sharp second, and then began to spin it between my fingers.

It was a tricky thing to do without cutting yourself. I'd rather not say just how many of the scars on my hands were from fucking up while spinning a knife.

As I thought about it, I fucked up, drawing a bright, painful line across the top of my middle finger. I didn't drop the knife, because that's way more dangerous, but I did stop.

I held out my hand, and examined the damage. It hadn't quite been enough to cut the skin—just enough to—

"Mai," Azula interrupted my thoughts. "Find somewhere else to put that knife, or I'll find it for you."

I was holding the knife tightly between my thumb and the pad of my index finger, which happened to point it directly at Azula's face. She hadn't moved, because sabretooth wolves don't believe in showing fear, but she was staring directly at it, her hands closed into fists on the deck below her.

"My apologies, Princess," I said, meaning it for once, and transferring the knife to my left hand. 

Azula turned her gaze away from my hand, and returned to her notes.

"Did you cut yourself again?"

"It's just a scratch," I said, opening and closing my right fist to double-check my mobility before holding my right fist up to my face to get a closer look at the scratch. 

"Why do you wear those gloves, Mai?" Azula asked, looking up at me, and then reaching out to grab my fist and examine the cut for herself. "They're obviously not protecting your hands." She pressed a thumb to the scratch, and I gave out a surprised grunt of pain. She dropped my hand, and picked up her pen once more. "Are you making some kind of fashion statement for that private of yours?"

I had been, in fact. When I was nine, and I started practicing with my knives, I hadn't liked the way he looked at the scars on my palms. I hadn't quite disliked the way he looked at the scars on my fingers enough to wear gloves that would steal my ability to throw a knife straight, but it had been a close thing.

Now, I just disliked how the air felt on the scars on my palms

I splayed my hands out in front of my chest, and gave Azula my best imitation of a Ty Lee smile.

"I am," I said. "Aren't they just the  _ cutest _ ?"

Azula snorted so hard she choked, and hard enough she drew a jagged line on the paper before her. She recovered enough to stop scribbling, stowing the now mostly ruined map beneath the stack, still snorting under her breath.

She surveyed the island before her.

"I've never seen someone who can throw a knife like you can, Mai," she said, scratching out more notes on the map before her. "And those are scars you got learning how to do that." She glanced at me. "You should be proud of that. It's evidence of the fact you were willing to bleed for something."

It's evidence of the fact I was willing to bleed for  _ Azula _ . I wasn't sure that was really something to be proud of.

Azula held my gaze, probably waiting for me to tear off my gloves and thank her for her wondrous advice. But she hadn't actually ordered me to take off my gloves, so I didn't.

A frown flitted across Azula's face, and she turned away. "Fine," I could just barely hear her mutter under her breath. Then, in a squealy Ty Lee whisper, she continued, "But you're  _ totally _ cuter without the gloves." She gave her hands a nice little Ty Lee flap as she said it.

I glanced down at my hands, and looked at the scars that ran down my fingers, and into the rough fabric of my gloves. Little white lines of pain and numbness I almost couldn't make out against the white of my skin in the sunlight.

If I closed my eyes, I could see the pattern—two lines, like an x on my right index finger, my left thumb, the only clean finger—but I had no idea what pattern the scars made on my palm. I only occasionally took my gloves off to sleep, and when I did, I didn't spend the morning staring at my palms before putting the gloves back on.

I turned back to the ocean before me, and Azula turned back to the island behind me. Silence settled between us again, only broken by the low thrumming of the steam engine beneath the deck, and the scratching of Azula's pen. I transferred my knife back to my right hand, and began to spin it between my fingers.

Azula didn't break the silence, absorbed in the thrilling task of correcting maps.

In the distance, the sea stirred, churning in a way not quite like all the other ways it liked it churn. A line of disturbance ran across the sea, just before the horizon. It swooped past us, and then turned, somewhere off to my left, and came speeding back towards us.

The sea parted, and a blue head lifted itself from the sea. My heart stopped in my chest, but nobody screamed.

I was the only one looking out at the wrong horizon.

The dragon didn't pull itself fully from the waves, leaving only its head above water, its whiskers thick, and dripping, as its golden gaze bored into me.

"What is it, Mai?" Azula asked me, glancing over at me, and the knife I was no longer spinning around my fingers. I turned to her, and she turned properly to me, and then glanced over her shoulder.

I followed her gaze, and found an empty ocean. Azula turned back to me, frowning, and then back to the island. She didn't actually seem interested in my answer, so I didn't try and give her one. A dark blue shadow, like an incredibly long koi fish, rushed towards the ship.

I folded my hands together, pulling another fives knives from my sheathes, and preparing myself for a hundred feet of dragon crashing into the battleship.

But the shadow vanished beneath the ship without incident. If it emerged on the other side of the ship, Azula would surely have noticed it, but she didn't cry out.

No one did.

The deck of the battleship was silent, aside from the low thrumming of the steam engines below the deck, the scratching of Azula's pen on the maps before her, and my heart, doing its best to beat out of its chest.

I cracked my shoulders, and stood.

Azula looked up at me.

"I'm feeling a little stiff," I said, hands still folded together, hiding the knives I was carrying. "I'm going to take a little walk."

"Don't fall in," Azula said, quite unhelpfully.

"Yeah," I said. "I'll do my best."

I slowly walked to the stern, and then, very casually, looked down, over the edge.

The roiling ocean we left in our wake stared back at me, no conspicuous shadows to be found. I turned my gaze to the horizon, and, out of the corner of my eye, I would have sworn I saw a dark blue shadow flick out from beneath the boat only barely visible through our ship's wake, for just a moment before it vanished again.

I turned back to the wake, but even after another five minutes, it didn't happen again. I walked along the port side of the ship, continuing to watch the wake out of the corner of my eye, but, of course, nothing further flicked out from beneath the boat. It was probably a figment of my imagination.

Just like the enormous blue dragon head I saw on the horizon, but no one else did.

I reached the bow, and leaned against the railing, resting my shoulder on the enormous spike that was the end of the gangplank and the very tip of the bow.

"What are you looking for?" Azula said, suddenly over my shoulder and close enough I could feel her breath on my left cheek.

"Dragons, of course," I said, correctly but as insincerely as I could manage.

There was a silence that stretched for ten pounds of my heart.

"Are mocking me, Mai?"

"I would never," I said.

_ There's a dragon under the ship _ , I didn't say.  _ Just waiting to toss us all overboard. _

Azula moved up beside me, and looked over the railing, down at the comparatively clean water of the bow.

My heart pounded as no shadows emerged from beneath the ship. Azula pulled back, and leaned back to examine me.

"Have you found any?" she asked.

"Fortunately, no," I lied.

Azula golden gaze, which, not at all surprisingly, bore a pretty solid resemblance to a dragon's gaze, bored into me for a long moment before she turned away.

"Then stop wandering about the deck. It's distracting."

_ Did you get lonely without me? _ I was not quite suicidal enough to say.

I followed her back to the railing, and seated myself against it once more, staring out at the horizon but not seeing it.

Dragons couldn't breathe underwater. I didn't know how long they could hold their breath, but dragons couldn't breathe underwater. 

I waited for the dragon to burst forth from beneath the ship at the most inopportune time, and bathe us all in flames. I waited for it to blow a hole in the bottom of the ship with some super powered lightning, and leaving us all stranded on this Agni-cursed island.

"How was Baishutai?" Azula asked, breaking my thoughts of all of our dragon-shaped deaths. I blinked at the horizon, and turned to look at Azula, my hands falling apart in my surprise. When I didn't immediately respond, Azula turned to me, "Please, don't tell me you're still—"

Her eyes widened at the sight of my knife-filled hands, and her body tensed, the air around her hands shimmering as she prepared to shoot me off of the ship.

"It was awful," I told her honestly, returning my hands to my sleeves. "I don't think I've ever been in a place so incredibly boring in my entire life."

After about a minute of silence of which Azula spent about thirty seconds staring at my sleeves, Azula spoke again.

"What about Ningde? That was more interesting than Baishutai, wasn't it?"

She looked smug.

"Literally anything would have been an improvement over Ningde."

Azula's smugness slipped, and she looked away, scratching something out onto the map.

"Would you have rather come back to Caldera?"

"Yes."

Azula looked up at the island, and then at me out of the corner of her eye.

"But your father was at a higher position in Ningde than he could have been in the Fire Nation."

_ My father? _

"Your father was in a higher position in Baishutai than he could have been in the Fire Nation!" she continued, and an ordinary person may have made the peasant's mistake of assuming she sounded defensive. "You should be thanking me."

"Thank you, Princess," I said automatically.

"Don't lie to me, Mai."

I stared at her, mouth open, for a good minute before I caught myself, and looked away.

"It was good for your family to leave," Azula said. "Your father couldn't have advanced in the Fire Nation, all of his positions he could have been promoted into were filled with higher blood, and it was hard to justify the position he was already in. He wasn't even close to a competent minister—but in the colonies, no one cares how well the ministers govern."

I remained silent.

"This was the right choice for your house—when you inherit your father's title, you will have greater influence because he had been a governor in the colonies. Why would you have rather come back to the Fire Nation, where your house could do nothing but stagnate in mediocrity like it had for centuries?"

Before I had been sent to the colonies, I had been one of Azula's two closest companions for five years. It was stunning how ignorant of me she had managed to remain.

"Answer me, Mai."

I hesitated, and the silence was loud. I tuned back to the ocean before me.

"I hate my house, Princess. I hate my father, my mother, and every member of my family I've ever met except for Tom-Tom. I'd be happy to see it all burn, see them all thrown out as peasants onto the streets of Caldera."

Azula stared down at her maps, and then looked up at me.

"I—" she began. She fell silent, looked down at her map. "I couldn't have known that," she finally said. "Anyone else would have been ecstatic."

I waited for her to tell me I deserve to suffer for it, but the words didn't come. When I looked to her, she was staring down at her maps, her lips pressed into a thin line.

She didn't say anything more, and I turned back to the ocean.

You'd think that the longer we went without being subjected to a terrible dragon-shaped death, I'd be less concerned—The dragon was probably gone, the dragon was probably never under the ship in the first place.

You'd be wrong.

I stood and stretched as Azula handed her maps off to Li, who had decided not to subject any of the men that were temporarily his men to Azula's whims. Azula had been silent for the last hour and a half of our slothbear crawl around the island.

She was still silent now.

"I'm super gross," I said to the the sun that was about three quarters of its way across the sky. "I'm going to take a bath before we go back to camp."

Azula considered my statement as the request it was, and then finally nodded.

"Find your own way back," she said. "I don't have the time to wait around for you."

"Right."

Azula remained silent as we walked together as far as we could. When Azula's path veered from mine, she turned away, and said "Don't fall asleep in the bath and drown."

"I'll do my best, Princess."

"Yes," Azula agreed, her heels clacking against the metal of the deck. "Hopefully that'll be enough."

I blinked at Azula being Azula, and then made my way to the private bath we had commandeered from Wu when we boarded the ship. I felt a little bad about it, but nowhere near bad enough to use the communal bath instead.

I washed the last five hours of sweat off, and then had a nice long, soak, counting out the minutes. After fifteen, I got out, dressed, and made my way to the dry dock.

I didn't get lost, but it was a close thing. I'm pretty sure we hadn't walked through the boiler room when we arrived, but I ended up walking through it getting back to the dry dock, which, in the ten seconds I walked through it, managed to pretty neatly undo any sense of being clean that I had gotten from my bath.

I arrived in the dry dock damp from the steam and my own sweat. One of the rowboats was gone, which meant that Azula hadn't elected to just swim to the shore.

The soldier that was present bowed to me. "Let me unload—"

"Give me the last rowboat," I interrupted him.

He hesitated, but eventually obeyed. I got in it, and descended down to the ocean surface. The cradle released me, and rose back to the dry dock.

I looked up, checked that no one was looking, and then put all of my weight on the right side of the rowboat.

The rowboat topplied, dunking me into the sea. The was a moment in which the sea was nothing but the a confusing blue of white and blue and black as I tried to stop spinning, and stabilize myself in the water.

Once I did, I wished that I didn't.

Two massive golden eyes stared at me from about twenty feet away.

This was a bad idea.

Two massive golden eyes attached to an enormous blue head that was larger than I was, between two sets of dragon claws, each of which was the length and the width of one of my legs.

I was not prepared for just how large the dragon would be. I wasn't really prepared for the dragon at all—I had convinced myself it was never here, and that I just needed to check to make sure—but I definitely was not prepared for just how mind-bogglingly large it was.

The blue dragon blinked at me, its reptilian face devoid of any expression I could read. A small stream of bubbles blew from one of its nostrils which was larger than my head. Its mouth opened, and—

_ What are you doing here, child? _

A voice like a thousand chanting monks crashed into my brain, not bothering to pass through my ears.

While I was trying to deal with the brain damage that had just been inflicted upon me, I missed the dragon's hand moving until its claws were already closing around me.

I didn't bother to struggle, already much too late for that. Its claws felt like blades on my skin, that ever-so-familiar of feeling of knowing you'd bleed if you moved just wrong.

It pulled me closer, just slowly enough to not cut me to ribbons.

The golden eyes narrowed at me.

_ You're the child that saw me, and didn't tell your people _ , it said, its voice still like an iron spike through my skull.

I was now close enough that when it blew its occasional stream of bubbles, they buffeted my face.

_ I have no quarrel with you, child _ , the dragon continued, around the enormous fangs that were literally so large they couldn't fit in its mouth.  _ My children and I simply wish to be left in peace. I am here as...  _ insurance.  _ I'm sure you understand. _

I didn't want to be the person to tell the dragon that could slice me into five even pieces that we were currently here with the mission of murdering all of its children and also it and its partner, but it was right about then that I realized I wasn't just in danger of being sliced into small pieces by the dragon's enormous claws, but I was also about to drown.

My vision began to darken around its edges, and my throat protested at my efforts to prevent it from breathing sea water.

In the darkness, the dragon pulled its head closer to me, which was a bit of a trick because its arms were shorter than the length of neck between the base of its arms and its head. Its long whiskers crossed the distance between us, and slapped at my face.  _ What has been done to you, child? What has happened to your bending? _

The dragon had apparently never seen a nonbender before, but that was not my highest priority. I reached out, and touched its nose—

_ I'm drowning _ , I thought as loud as I could, while I lost the battle with my throat, and belched up some bubbles.  _ Help me _ .

Whether it heard me, or just inferred from the way I was leaking air, it realized my predicament.

_ Oh, _ it said, and the world was a blue blue.  _ My apologies, I always forget— _

My head burst from the sea.

_ —how fragile you children are _ .

I panted at the air as I caught the bottom of the rowboat and used it to hold myself up. I looked down at the water below me and two massive golden eyes stared back at me.

One of its long whisker slithered across my leg.  _ Goodbye, child _ , I was made to hear.  _ Don't come back _ .

I coughed some more.

"Lady Mai!" I heard from somewhere above me. "Do you need—"

"I'm fine," I interrupted, in my best imitation of my mother's  _ I'm a noble and you're not voice _ .

I succeeded, despite not also bathing the subject in my mother's patented dead-fish stare.

With some effort, I flipped the rowboat and then spent another minute or two finding and retrieving the paddles.

I then flipped the rowboat trying to get in it.

Alright.

Cool.

I flipped the rowboat back right side up, gathered the paddles, and once again began engaging in the very fun activity of treading water while fully clothed.

I recommend to anyone who hates themselves, and enjoys suffering.

I briefly considered admitting to whoever it was up on the dry dock that I was, in fact, not fine, but when I looked up to the dry dock, I saw a thin metal ladder bolted to the hull leading from the dry dock down to the ocean.

Sure enough, I looked to my right, and found the end of the ladder. It looked wet, and very slick.

I dragged the rowboat over to the ladder and checked.

It was indeed, very slick, but thankfully the rungs were narrow enough I could curl my hand entirely around a rung. I was three rungs up when a wave swept up the rowboat, and I had to flail to catch it with my foot before it was swept away.

In my flailing, I successfully hit my head against the hard metal of a rung.

"Are you—"

"Didn't you hear me the first time?" I said, giving the horizon my mother's patented dead fish stare.

The horizon quailed, and the soldier above me fell silent. I pulled the boat under me, and slowly lowered myself into it.

I took a moment to just sit, and enjoy that gritty sort of dampness you get from being soaked in ocean water. I reached up to my hair, which had been thoroughly wrecked by my little adventure through the ocean, one of my horns almost on the top of my head, and the other one drooping at my neck and beyond repair.

I tossed the two leather straps I used to secure my hair onto the bottom of the rowboat before me, and then flopped back until I was laying on the bottom of the rowboat, staring up at the sky. I twisted, and pulled the paddles out from where they were stabbing me in the back, laid them beside me, and then settled back again.

Dragons could talk.

Cool, great.

The Fire Nation had ordered the murder of every last dragon, and, if the Fire Nation was to be believed, they had succeeded.

I closed my eyes.

Yet another reason to be proud to be a Fire Nation citizen.

I opened my eyes to see the soldier who had helped me in the dry dock hanging off the ladder just below the dry dock, staring down at me.

He flinched when my gaze met his eye slits, and he almost lost his grip on the ladder.

"I'm sorry, Lady Mai," he said. "I had to check."

"It's fine," I told him, not moving. "I shouldn't have yelled—I didn't want someone to see me like this. If you could just keep this between us."

"Of course," he said, jumping at the opportunity to show his deference after explicitly disobeying me.

He didn't leave, though, still hanging off the ladder below the dry dock.

"If you could leave me in peace," I said, doing my best to look meaningfully at the dry dock.

He hesitated, and for a moment I thought he wasn't going to listen, but then he nodded. "Please, be careful," he said before pulling himself the rest of the way up the ladder, and out of sight.

I turned my gaze back to the sky, and gave myself one more minute to lay there before I sat up, tied my hair back into its horns, and then set to rowing myself back to shore. The sun was about an hour from setting off to the west when I arrived at the shore, and dismounted my rowboat.

I had grounded my boat at low tide, so as soon as I stepped out of the boat, water swirled around my feet.

I grabbed the end of the boat and dragged it until I hit dry sand. Azula's boat was slowly floating away in the tide because she hadn't bothered.

Dropping the rowboat, I walked towards the camp, past the two guards that now seemed woefully unprepared for what this island was prepared to throw at them, and stopped just inside the camp.

If I was Azula, where would I be?

I looked to the second largest tent in the camp, and the soldier standing there tensed, and then I turned away, to the white tent five tents down.

Azula was kneeling beside Ty Lee's sleeping form when I entered. It was hard to tell from the off grey light that filtered through the walls of the tent, but Ty Lee looked like she had a more color in her cheeks than we had left this morning.

Azula turned away from Ty Lee, and looked up at me, golden gaze bearing striking resemblance to the dragons, looking not just at me but straight through me.

"When you said you were going to take a bath, I assumed you would take clothes off first," she said, her voice low. "Is this an Earth Kingdom custom that I'm unaware of that rubbed off on you?"

"Rowboats are hard," I whispered, approaching and crouching on Ty Lee's other side. I brushed Ty Lee bangs from her face, and set a hand against her cheek.

When Tom-Tom was eleven months old, he walked into a table corner, and split his head open. I was the one who found him, covered in his own blood, his body cool. His skin had felt cold for weeks.

Ty Lee's skin was warm.

When I looked up, Azula's golden gaze was still boring into me.

"A rowboat—that doesn't sound like you. Why didn't you take one of the steam ships?"

"I wanted to try something new."

Azula gaze didn't waver at my obvious lie.

"Is there anything you want to tell me, Mai?" Azula said, her voice still just barely a whisper, but holding the authority of the Crown Princess of the Fire Nation. "You saw something today—you went looking for it over the railings, and then you dumped yourself in the ocean to find it. What is it that you saw?"

I held Azula's gaze, and Ty Lee's face grew warmer under my hand as my blood raced away from my extremities.

I could still feel the dragon's bladed claws around my body, could still feel the way its voice vibrated through my bones.

"I thought I saw a Kraken-whale," I lied. "But I didn't, it was just my imagination."

"Which is why you went looking for it by yourself," Azula said. "Why did you lie to me, Mai?"

"I didn't want to bother you with my imagined—" I stopped myself, midbreath.

_ I didn't want to bother you with my imagined dragons _ .

"No," Azula said, standing. "I don't imagine you would." She walked to the mouth of the tent. "Stay here." She ducked under the flap of the tent.

"What's happening?"

I looked down to Ty Lee, who was blinking up at me with groggy eyes.

"It's just Azula being Azula," I told her, pulling my hand away from her cheek, ignoring her sad grumblings. "Go back to sleep."

Ty Lee's eyes narrowed at me, but she was already losing the battle with her fatigue, and her eyes shuttered closed.

I counted out sixty seconds, and then stood and walked to the tent flap. I pulled it aside, and watched Azula close the last distance to the beach.

She stopped at the surf, and then looked back at me because sabretooth wolves can always tell when someone's watching them.

She was much too far away for me to read her expression, but she didn't come storming back towards me, so it probably wasn't too bad.

Still facing me, she stripped off her mantle, her shirt, her pants, and her boots, tossing then in a messy pile at her feet before finally pulling her crown from her hair, and tossing it down onto the pile of her clothes. 

She stood there in her underclothes, her hair loose behind her, staring at me for a good long moment before she turned back to the ocean, ran the last few steps and threw herself into the ocean.

She vanished into the ocean with barely a splash. I waited until I could see her wake moving away from the shore before I stepped out of the tent, stopped in our tent to gather a clean set of clothes for Azula, and started making my way towards the shore.

"Find somewhere else to be," I ordered the guards as I passed them.

I reached the pile of Azula's clothes about the time Azula's wake vanished, and I shifted the bulk of Azula's clothes onto my shoulder to gather three knives into each of my hands.

The seconds ticked by, each longer than the last, until Azula's wake reappeared, and began moving towards the shore. The tenseness in my shoulders loosened, and I shifted Azula's clothes back onto my shoulder to return my knives to their sheathes.

As I did so, the back of my neck itched, and I twisted my head to glanch back at the camp behind me. The guards were gone, the soldier before Wu's tent looking rigidly forward, and no one else in sight.

The itching did not abate.

I turned back to the ocean just in time for Azula to emerge from the surf like a fire spirit given life, surrounded by a cloud of steam as the sea water boiled off of her. By the time she stopped before me, she was dry.

"Did you find anything, Princess?""

"I thought I told you to stay in the tent."

"I thought you might want clean clothes," I said, holding the neatly folded pile of clothes out before me.

Azula took the shirt from my hands and pulled it back on. She took the pants, then the mantle. Finally she took a sock and did a funny little dance that involved standing on one foot, shaking the sand off of her foot, putting on the sock, and then putting on a boot. She repeated this process one more time, then leaned down to pick her crown and hair tie back up from the ground, and handed them to me.

She turned back to the ocean, and pulled her hair out from her collar.

"If you would," she said.

I had never seen Azula do her own hair. She had to be capable of it, considering she regularly woke up and tied her hair without assistance, but ever since we were children if she needed to tie her hair around Ty Lee or me, she would ask one of us to do it for her.

It had happened often enough I was better at tying Azula's hair than my own.

This wasn't terribly surprising, though—the worst thing that could happen because I fucked up my own hair was that I looked ugly.

"Nothing would make me happier," I said through the crown I had pinched between my teeth, having already begun gathering her hair.

I didn't touch Azula, as a rule. No one did. It was the sort of thing even an idiot could understand.

Touch the Fire Nation Princess, and die.

(For everyone but Ty Lee, of course.)

But I had never mastered the art of tying someone's hair without touching them. 

My knuckles burned as they brushed against Azula's neck.

"I'm going to find the dragon you tried to hide from me today," Azula said to the empty ocean. "You are not going to be able to stop me."

I pinched Azula's hair in place with my right hand, and unwound the leather strip I had wound through the fingers of my left hand.

"I would never," I said, still speaking through the crown of the princess of the fire nation, as I tied Azula's hair in place. 

"Don't lie to me, Mai."

I pulled Azula's crown from my teeth, wiped it clean on my vest, and then set it in place. Azula shook her head slowly from side to side, checking the everything was place, and then turned to me.

"Eventually," Azula said, taking a step closer to me, bathing me in the stench of burned flesh only Azula's breath seemed to have, "you're going to realize you can't hide things from me."

I met her gaze with my best imitation of my mother dead fish stare.

"It's my fault, of course. I should have realized earlier, and then we wouldn't be having this conversation." She pushed me to the side, and began walking towards the camp.

I glanced at her clothes still strewn on the sand, and then followed after her.

"Did you find it?"

I glanced up at the caves on the platform, debating the merits of continuing to pretend that I hadn't seen a dragon, and golden eyes stared back at me from the shadows of the cave.

"No," I lied, turning back to Azula. "I got soaked for nothing."

Azula glanced back at me, her golden gaze evaluating me.

"Which dragon did you see?"

"The blue one."

Either Azula believed my lie, or decided she didn't care.

"Tomorrow, we'll be going into the city. If the sun warriors are hiding somewhere, I'll find them."

I glanced at the cave out of the corner of my eye in last moment before we passed under the platform, and nothing but darkness stared back.

"And if they're not?"

"Then I'll burn the jungle down."

The city was too large to explore in a day. It was two miles long, and a mile wide, although the edges were unclear, and uneven. You could walkwalk it in an afternoon, if you weren't also checking for traps that didn't seem to exist.

The emptiness of the city was no more pleasant on my second incursion than it had been on my first. The shadows were still long and just a little misshapen from the overgrowth on the buildings around us.

The city looked deserted, like no one had lived there in centuries, but arenas didn't groom themselves, and trip wires didn't last for centuries. 

The silence in the city was oppressive, the dirt just soft enough to mostly muffle the sound of Azula's metal heels. 

It was around the time that we stopped checking for traps that we encountered another. A pit trap, triggered by a tripwire Azula noticed and I did not.

She caught me, just as I was about to walk through it, and tossed me back, sending my skidding on my butt across the ground that felt a lot less soft when I was dropped onto it, butt first.

I waited there, sitting on the ground, legs strewn out in front of me, as Azula destroyed the pit in a whirlwind of red fire. She pulled herself from the pit, and said—"What are you just sitting around for? Let's go."

Classic Azula.

The perimeter of the city was trapped. The city had two obvious entrances—the one we came in, and the one directly opposite it—and we encountered some variation of the pit at both. Our entrance had an arrow trap, the opposite entrance had a horrific little bear trap. There were also other traps, scattered unevenly around the jagged edges of the city—a weird glue trap near the southeast corner, another pit trap near the middle of the western side, another arrow trap as you moved further north. There were fourteen traps in total, and on that first day, we found all of them, and Azula destroyed every last one of them.

In that first day, we walked every road in the city from end to end. The roads in the city were perfectly straight, but ended unexpectedly in double-width buildings, or shifted about ten feet over to accomodate a particularly oversized building. All of the roads were either perfectly north-south or perfectly east west, except for four—one diagonal road that led away from each corner of the pyramid. Azula drew out a map of each of them, each road carefully drawn and proportioned, each road labeled with comically terrible names.

_ Main road _ for the road we arrived in the city on that led up to the backside of the pyramid— _ Broadway _ for the road that led out from the other side of the pyramid.

_ East Road  _ for the road beside it.

_ Jungle Road _ for the road that ran along the jungle in the southeast corner, but wasn't actually the easternmost road for most of its length.

_ Cherry Road _ for that road, despite the rather distinct lack of cherry trees.

_ Nation Road _ was the road that off from the south east corner of the pyramid.

"Is there something you want to say?" Azula asked me when I was looking over her as she wrote out  _ Sloth Bear Road _ . I also saw  _ Sai Road, Fire Road. _

"Not a thing, Princess."

It was on our second day in which we actually started going into the buildings.

I brought a torch which I had to light myself, because Azula didn't believe in sharing.

There were no real houses in the city. Nothing that felt like a dwelling. There was barely anything that even felt like a normal, ordinary building. There were shrines, pyramids, palaces, fields of pillars. Did I mention pyramids? There were a lot of pyramids—small, squat little things, only four layers tall, but distinctly pyramid shaped all the same.

We didn't start at The Pyramid, because why would we start at the most interesting place in the city when we could instead start with literally anywhere else?

The first place we explored were the two towers that framed the path we entered in. They were six stories tall, and boring for all six of them. The dust was thick on the ground, and uneven. We left footprints beyond us where we walked.

The top floor had a stone desk, stone bookshelves, and a trap door on the ceiling, leading up to the roof.

"Why didn't you just take this?"Azula asked, pointing at it.

"Didn't occur to me," I said, honestly.

Azula hummed in response, climbing up to the roof, making some weird snuffling noises like a wolverine bear scrounging for food.

There was a muffled crash as she tossed herself from the top of the tower. Having already experienced the joy of leaping from the top of this tower, I elected to take the stairs.

As I walked down the stairs, though, the air got hotter, stuffier—

Smokier.

Azula was setting the tower on fire.

With me in it.

I ran back up the stairs, straining to breathe through the unbreathable air, and pulled myself through the trapdoor with a gasp. I leaned against the lip of the tower, and took another couple breaths of clean air.

Below me, Azula stepped out of the smoking door, and looked back up at me with what was probably an exasperated expression.

"Stop being so maudlin, Mai, and jump," she shouted up at me, like I was being unreasonable for expecting her not to try and set the stone tower on fire while I was still in it.

Where did she even find anything to burn?

Behind me, the smoke began to clear, answering my question. Another moment passed, and the smoke was gone, like it had never been.

This was a stone tower—there was been nothing to burn. I pulled myself away from the lip, ignoring Azula "For Agni's sake, Mai", and made my way back down the now soot-streaked tower.

The tower was well ventilated, large windows on each floor, so the air was clean, without a source to pump black smoke into the air. With each floor, the stones beneath my feet grew a little hotter, the air a little stuffier.

I looked down the last staircase to the faintly glowing stones of the first floor, and decided against risking it.

I walked to the window, and tossed myself out.

"You're ridiculous, Mai," Azula said, rolling her eyes at me.

"Are you going to try to set every building in this city on fire?"

"I'd burn this city to the ground if I could," Azula said, not answering me.

Her actions over the next several buildings, though, answered the question for me.

The answer was "not  _ every  _ building", just the suspicious ones. If she thought there was something being hidden, she'd torch the place, just to be sure.

Two hours of Azula occasionally setting buildings on fire with me in them, and I finally broken down and asked, "Do you actually expect to find people hiding in these buildings? Even if they had been here, they had to have heard us yesterday."

"I ordered Wu to post a truly ridiculous number of guards around the city before I woke you yesterday with orders to kill on sight," Azula said as we walked up the stairs of a pseudo pyramid, even though we had gone  _ around _ the big main pyramid without going into it. "They wouldn't have been able to get away."

The pseudo pyramids felt a little bit like shrines. So far, we had been in three, and each of them had detailed murals covering all of their walls, stone benches in some of their rooms, rooms that looked a little like offices beside rooms scorched black with soot. 

We'd seen a lot of the red and blue dragons doing all manner of things, a couple people, some random pictures of the ocean, a map or two of the archipelago, and a whole bunch of other things. Each pseudo pyramid had a lot of walls, and literally all of them were covered.

In the second office of this pyramid, one of the walls was a picture of the dragons, bloodily eating a sheep, one was a multicolored flame, one was a map of the island, and the last was a map of the world.

It wasn't a very good map of the world—the shape of the Earth Kingdom and the North Pole pretty obviously wrong—but it was a map of the world.

When had this been drawn? Who'd drawn it?

There were no countries drawn on the map, no cities named, nothing to obviously date it, but it wasn't empty.

Scattered unevenly and sort of randomly across the map, there were little element symbols—fire, water, earth, and air—along with some symbols I only recognized from Pai Sho. 

A green fire over Ba Sing Se, a red fire symbol just south of the North pole. A green earth symbol over Omashu, a white earth symbol over the Southern Air Temple. Two water symbols in the eastern seas, one in the north, one in the south. Three air symbols, two on the Western and Northern Air Temples, and one on a mountain I didn't recognize in the Southern Earth Kingdom. A White Lotus symbol, on the Southern coast of the Earth Kingdom, a Cherry Blossom symbol on the North pole, a Lily symbol in the Eastern sea on the Equator.

The Fire Nation was entirely covered by the bookshelf, and the South Pole hidden by the desk. I wasn't really curious enough to try and move a stone bookshelf, but I was curious enough to crouch down and shove my torch under the table.

There was a green earth symbol on the eastern edge, and a blue fire symbol on the south pole.

I blinked.

"Mai, what are you dawdling for?" Azula asked from the door. "Are you hurt I didn't tell you?"

I considered the many incorrect ways of answering that question as Azula approached me, her eyes on the map.

"Or did you not believe me when I told you that I was going to kill every last one of them?" she asked, not looking at me.

"I'll take the cellar," I said, walking out of the room, down the hallway to the heavy stone doors leading down the cellar. One of the doors was already open, so I only had to heave open one of them. When I looked back, I could see Azula still in the office I left, her eyes fastened on the map, not looking at me.

I dropped down into the cellar, and directly into a puddle that sprayed water in all directions, making whatever mole rats called this place their home squeak in displeasure. I looked down at my now wet pants, and sighed. I glanced up at the little square of sunlight above me, part of me waiting for Azula to play the fun game "shut Mai in the cellar".

The doors didn't slam closed above me, because I guess we weren't eight anymore. Also, I had a torch, which would have meant Azula couldn't enjoy the sound of me scrambling about the dark in fear.

I took in a deep breath of that sweet stench of mold and mildew. I turned around, and then froze.

In the corner were a small pair of golden eyes, and there was an instant in which I thought the blue dragon had somehow followed me and was somehow in the cellar with me—but it wasn't a dragon.

It was a child.

I blinked, but the child didn't disappear.

It did start shaking, though.

"Are you—," it said in a small voice, "Are you going to hurt me?"

The child was maybe six years old, and too dirty to determine its gender. The fact it was just wearing a little skirt pant thing with its chest bared probably meant it was a boy, but then again, I had known Ty Lee as a child.

The boy was still shivering, waiting for my answer. He had put his hands in front of him in a shivering approximation of a firebending stance.

"What are you dawdling for, Mai?" Azula said before I could answer, and her voice shocked me enough I dropped my torch into the puddle at my feet. The torch spluttered, died, and the boy vanished back into the darkness.

A thump sounded from behind me as Azula dropped into the cellar behind me.

"Well?"

"I was admiring the scenery," I said, my voice admirably level, gesturing to the shadows.

"Don't tell me you're getting cold feet, Mai." My feet were actually quite cold, considering how I was currently standing in a puddle. "One of their traps hurt Ty Lee."

_ And we all know how Ty Lee feels about genocide _ , I didn't say, leaning down to pick up the torch.

"Don't worry, I can do all of the killing—those pretty little hands of yours can stay clean."

I shook the water off of my torch and looked up at Azula. I stepped towards her, turning so that my back was to the boy, and then held the torch out to her.

Azula looked down at it, and then waved a hand over the end of it. It sputtered, and the roared to life.

"Do you mean these pretty little hands," I said, waving the scarred fingers of my free hand at her.

"It's a figure of speech, Mai, don't be difficult," she said, sweeping over the room behind me, golden eyes evaluating.

I took regular, even breaths, and resisted the itching in my fingers to draw my knives.

Azula's gaze swept back to me, and she smiled.

"I can see how you got caught up in the scenery here, Mai. It's so beautiful."

"It heals the soul."

Azula continued smiling at me for a very long and unpleasant moment before she crouched, and launched herself back up into the rest of the house.

Once she vanished from my vision, I checked behind me, and found the corner that held the child hidden from view.

I turned my body, revealing the boy once more, his eyes wide, and his hands clapped over his mouth.

"No," I said to him, voice so low I could barely hear it. “I’m not going to hurt you."

"What was that Mai?"

"Just saying my goodbyes to the scenery," I told her. I looked at the bare wall before me, notably lacking in ladders, and then jumped. Azula caught my hand, and heaved me out.

"Good thing I didn't close those doors on you," Azula said with the same smile she smiled when she slammed my family's cellar doors closed on me.

My heart pounded in my ears, angry and loud and terrified, but when I spoke, my voice was calm, and even.

"How did the Sun Warriors get up from there?"

"The Sun Warriors were the first firebenders," Azula said. "They would obviously just jump."

I didn't care. I turned towards the office, not really seeing the broken shelves and desk, just focusing on the open entrance between me and it, and started making my way towards it, but Azula didn't follow me. I stopped, and turned back to see her taking a step towards the cellar.

I opened my mouth to—do what, I don't know—and Azula slammed the cellar doors closed with a smile.

She turned to me.

"You look so pale, Mai," she said, smiling like she had when she told me she hadn't known I was in the cellar. "What's wrong?"

"Just remembering what a great childhood I had," I lied.

Still smiling, Azula walked away from the cellar, nine steps from the door, eight, seven, six—"You're welcome"—five, four, three, two, one.

I crossed the room to the cellar doors, heaved one of the cellar doors back open to Azula's snorted "Really?" and then followed Azula out into the sunlight.


	11. Book 1 - Chapter 4

I lay awake that night, staring up at the ceiling, waiting for Azula to fall asleep. Ty Lee had been declared well enough to leave the medical tent, so I had her snoring to keep me company as well.

It had been ten minutes since Azula had put out the lantern in our room, and I was pretty sure she was asleep. I counted out the minutes. Another ten minutes, and I could leave. I could go to the dragon that was hopefully still hiding in its caves atop the platform, and tell it that one of its children hadn't escaped.

Ten minutes.

Nine.

Eight.

Seven.

Minutes had never felt so long.

Six.

Five.

Four.

Three—

A weak breeze blew across my face, and I slammed my eyes closed as Azula glanced back at me from open tent flap.

Azula had noticed—of course she had noticed—

The tent flap slipped back closed.

One.

Two.

I sat up, strapped my knives to my bare forearms, and slipped on my boots, not bothering with socks. I walked to the tent flap, and pulled the flap open to glance at the empty camp before me.

"What—"

"Go back to sleep, Ty Lee," I whispered. "Don't tell Azula I was awake."

"Wha—"

I stepped out into the night, glanced about me for Azula, and then started running.

There were guards at the end of the camp, but I didn't have time to sneak past them, and blew past them without a word.

"Hey!"

One of them yelled after me, but I ignored him, jumping halfway up the ladder and then hauling myself the rest of the way up it, two rungs at a time.

I paused briefly at the top of the cliff, and peeked over it finding the arena empty, which was a great sign.

I pulled myself over the cliff, and set off across the arena at a dash. With each step, my bare feet slipped around in that horrible way bare feet slip in shoes, but it was easier to pick up speed across packed dirt than it was across sand, and— 

From behind me, I heard an earth shaking roar, and stopped despite myself, directly between the crags framing the stone pathway leading to down to the ruined city.

Slowly, I turned back to the platform, just as Azula was thrown out of the cave, and skidded back along it.

"If you won't help me," I heard her bellow. "Then you can die."

The air around her lit with red fire as the enormous blue dragon burst forth from the cave and roared the enraged roar of a thousand dying panther lions. From between its open jaws, a literal torrent of red flames poured, engulfing Azula completely.

I took a step forward without thinking, and then Azula burst from the mass of flames, flying towards the dragon, her heels aflame.

The dragon tried to pull away, but Azula caught ahold of one of its whiskers, her heels still aflame, accelerating ever closer to its enormous face.

With the war cry of the sabretooth wolf, Azula crashed into the face of the dragon, sending it flying back into the mountain and sending her flying off the platform, directly towards me.

She skidded across the arena, and dropped a hand to the dirt to pull herself to a stop. Her body tensed as she readied herself to fling herself back at the dragon when she noticed me.

Her head snapped to the side to stare back at me.

"What do you think you're doing here, Mai?" she asked, before realizing she didn't actually care, and turned away. "Don't interfere," she said, and then launched herself back at the dragon that was pulling itself from the mountain. I could hear the camp coming awake, screaming at the flames that I could only assume were consuming the camp, judging from the black smoke in the air.

The dragon unfurled, pulling the rest of its staggeringly massive body from its cave, spreading its wings out behind it and spreading its claws out wide before it. It growled the growl of a raging wildfire.

Azula crashed into the platform, her right hand already pointing forward. Lightning lept from Azula's fingers, brighter than the mostly full moon above us, but the dragon caught the lightning with a claw flicking it off into mountain with a deafening crash.

_ You think you can fight me, child? _ the dragon roared.  _ You think you can hunt me, like you hunted the rest of my kind? Your kind learned flames from  _ me.  _ I am  _ Ran— _ Agni's will made manifest _ .

It caught another blinding lightning strike on its other claw and sent it flying off into the other peak.

Each lightning strike had left a crater on the mountain side, loosening rocks that now began to crash down into the tents below. The screams from the camp changed in tenor.

"I am Azula, Crown Princess of the Fire Nation," Azula yelled back at the dragon, leaping off of the platform, "and I'll finish what my great-grandfather started."

Azula's heels lit, flinging her into the air over the fiery slash of Ran's claws, up and directly into Ran's other hand. It came crashing down upon her, but she sped between two of Ran's enormous claws, driving her right hand forward once again, lashing out with lightning from point blank range.

Ran took the lightning to the face, its head snapping up, its body quivering, but it didn't fall. It snapped its head back down, its scales unmarred, and opened its mouth. 

Azula dove as the area she had been in was split with an enormous bolt of lightning.

_ Your lightning— _ Ran began as Azula crashed into its hands and leapt back up before it, one hand already pulled back, swirling with red flames— _ cannot hurt me _ .

Ran blinked away her flames like they were nothing, and then opened its mouth.

_ You think those are flames? _ It said, flames boiling at the back of its throat.  _ These are flames _ .

If what the dragon had let loose before was a torrent of flames, this was a sea. A bright, brilliant red, pouring forth in a deadly cone, engulfing Azula and then continuing on past her, painting the world the color of blood.

I ran. Forward, across the arena, up the steps. With every step towards the sea of flames in the sky, it got hotter, from unpleasantly hot to eventually lethal. My exposed skin began to burn.

In my hands, I held my six sharpest knives. I was about to find out it they could cut dragon scale.

I stepped up to the platform, my exposed skin aching, pulled back my arm, and―

The cone of flames still pouring forth from Ran's maw bulged at the center, and began to swirl into a orb of flames.

I hesitated.

The cone of flames became a whirlpool, sucking in flames from the dragon's mouth and back from the sky, burning brighter and brighter, outshining the moon, shining like a second sun.

My knives slipped from my suddenly burning hands.

It was hotter than anything I'd ever experienced, and the arms I lifted to cover my face burned like Azula had personally lit them on fire. I fell to my knees, and Ran stopped breathing fire, stopped feeding the sun before it.

The orb expanded, thinning into a ring of white flames, revealing Azula within them, her clothes scorched, but her skin untouched, arms held wide on either side of her.

"I am Azula, heir of Sozin," Auzla screamed. "And all of the world's fire belongs to me!"

She slapped her hands together, and the ring shattered and surged forward, crashing into the dragon's face, and sending it flying backwards, crashing down into the ocean behind it.

The flames at Azula's feet flickered and died, and she came crashing down onto the platform beside me, chest heaving.

She looked at me and frowned at my bright red skin, the bloody knives I had dropped and then fallen upon. "Mai, what are you doing here?" She reached out to my burned arms, and I flinched away from the flash of pain her touch invoked.

Azula snarled at my response, and stalked forward to the edge of the platform.

The dragon was pulling itself from the water, the blue of the scales on its face now scorched black. Azula leapt from the platform, red flames on her heels flinging her forward, but the dragon wasn't looking at her.

It was looking at me.

_ Oh, yes _ , I heard, like a spike in my brain.  _ This child was so rude, I forgot—I am not here to fight. _ It turned back up to Azula, who was now crashing down upon it.  _ I have no quarrel with you _ , it said, and then flipped—

"Wait!" I shouted.

—and slithered away into the ocean.

Azula crashed into the place where it had been with a scream, her flames going up in a cloud of steam.

"Coward!" I heard her bellow in the moment before the ocean closed in around her.

I slowly lowered my arms, wincing as I straightened them. They were redder than expected, which was bad, but not any other colors, which was good. The same burning pain on my forearms was mirrored down the center of my face, where I'd been stupid enough to look between my arms.

I winced again as I stood, the shallow cuts the knives I had knelt on had made on my shins stinging as they came into contact with the air, and I looked down upon the chaos of the camp below.

Most of the population of the camp was out on the sand, most of their tents scorched, on fire, or in ashes.

I searched out our tent, and found it still standing, Ty Lee standing outside of it, looking up at me. She waved, and I waved back.

In the bay, the battleship was moving towards the shore, all seven of its mini boats already in the bay, powering towards us. As I glanced at the ocean, Azula stepped from the ocean, in a billowing cloud of steam.

Below me, Ty Lee gestured for me to jump down, because almost dying wasn't going to stop Ty Lee from being Ty Lee.

I gathered my knives and took the stairs instead, one at a time. When I reached the arena, I stared down the stone path to the city.

I swallowed, and then turned away, making my way down the rope ladder to the deafening chaos of the camp.

Ty Lee rushed up to me, and then enveloped me in a hug. "Ow," I said. "That hurts."

"Oops," Ty Lee said, dancing back. "My bad!"

She squinted down at the brightest red of the burns on my forearms.

"Don't poke them," I said, as she prepared to poke them.

"I wasn't going to poke them," Ty Lee lied. "Those look like they hurt."

"They do hurt. Don't poke them."

It was important, so I said it twice.

Ty Lee still looked like she was tempted.

The chaos in the camp was beginning to calm. In the distance, the boats had arrived on the shore, and the battleship was about halfway to the shore.

Azula was at the edge of the camp, and getting closer.

"Mai," she said when she got within earshot, "what were you doing in that arena?"

_ I thought you were going to go murder a child, so I was chasing after you _ , I didn't say.

"Were you there to help me," she came to a stop beside Ty Lee, lining up beside her like it was two of them against me, "or were you there to help the dragon?" Azula wasn't smiling, but her voice was casual, like we were just discussing the weather.

"I—"

"Azula, why were your flames red?" Azula froze, and Ty Lee turned to me. "You saw it too, right? All of Azula's flames were red—" she turned back to Azula, "I haven't seen you bend red flames since your grandpa died."

The flames that Azula had used to destroy the pit trap that held Ty Lee, I remembered belatedly, had been red.

Azula hesitated, mouth half open.

Ty Lee didn't notice, because Ty Lee was staring off over Azula's right shoulder.

"The dragon didn't deserve—"

"Oh," Ty Lee said, dropping her right fist into her left palm and interrupting Azula for the second time in a row. "That's why you're looking for dragons—you want them to give you your blue flames back."

_ If you won't help me, then you can die _ .

"Why didn't you tell us?" Ty Lee asked, rubbing Azula's shoulder. "We wouldn't have cared."

Wow, what a choice of words.

"You wouldn't have cared?" Azula said in a low whisper. "I am Azula of the blue flames. My flames are  _ who I am.  _ You don't—"

She stopped, took a deep breath, shaking her head.

"I forgot who I was talking to." Ty Lee beamed, like it was a compliment, even though I was about ninety percent sure it wasn't. "Yes, Ty Lee. I lost my blue flames four months ago, and I'm trying to get them back."

Ty Lee beamed harder.

"There was nothing useful in the Fire Nation, but we ostensibly learned firebending from the dragons, so here I am." Azula slid her gaze back over to me. "That dragon friend of yours called my blue flames an abomination. Which is funny, because I didn't know dragons could talk."

She was looking at me, but Ty Lee responded in my stead.

"Yeah, that was weird," Ty Lee agreed. "Its voice gave me a headache, what was that?"

"What about you, Mai, did you know dragons could talk? Did you have a little chat with the dragon under my ship?"

"It's new news—"

"Because it looked like recognized you, and I swear it looked at you before it ran away."

"Princess—" Ty Lee said, pulling on Azula's sleeve.

"You've been staring at that cave a lot over the last two days—you nearly tripped over that cliff behind you because you were so busy staring at it earlier tonight." She moved towards me, dragging Ty Lee, still attached to her sleeve, with her. "I'm going to repeat myself, Mai—did you get dressed up to help me fight the dragon, or to help the dragon fight  _ me _ ." 

"Didn't you see how Mai went running up to the platform to save you?" Ty Lee said, having foregone limply holding on to Azula's sleeve to throw her arms around her, muscles in her arms well defined as she held Azula in place. "She was obviously going to help you. Look at how burned she got by the dragon's fire!"

"I didn't need to be saved," Azula said, but her eyes dropped to my arms.

"I thought you were dead for sure!" Ty Lee continued. "There was so much fire, and you were completely gone."

Azula reached forward, and grabbed one of my arms. I preemptively flinched, but her hands were ice cold.

"You got these burns for me?" she said.

"I assure you, Princess, I did not get burned on purpose."

"Ty Lee, get off me," Azula said. "I'm not going to hurt Mai."

Ty Lee released her because she's a chump, and Azula stepped closer to me, for once not pouring off heat like a blazing furance.

"Even if she had been there to help the dragon, I wasn't going to hurt her," Azula continued, twisting my forearms to look at the fainter burns on the backs of my arms. "What sort of monster do you think I am?"

It was trick question, and Ty Lee knew it. Ty Lee giggled uncomfortably.

Azula dropped my arm.

"You'll be fine," she said. "It shouldn't even blister."

I barely contained my flinch when her cold fingers touched my cheek, her thumb tracing my burned nose.

Her nails were sharp, like a four tiny little blades held to my face, and I was reminded of being held in the dragon's claws.

"Tell me you were there to help me fight the dragon, Mai."

"I was there to help you fight the dragon, Princess."

Something that had been frozen in Azula's expression loosened, and her hand fell away from my face.

"Go back to the ship, and run cold water over your burns for at least ten minutes," Azula said. "Take one of those dinghys, I'm sure the soldiers don't really need them."

Thirty minutes later, and I was back in bed, counting out the minutes. The dragon was gone, but the child was not.

Ten.

Nine.

Eight.

Seven.

Six.

Five.

Four.

Three.

Two.

One.

I checked that Azula was asleep. I checked that Ty Lee was asleep. I strapped on two sheaths of knives, and this time, I pulled on socks before pulling on my boots, then pulled on my black cloak, and tip toed out of the tent. I waited in the shadows of our tent for another five minutes, waiting to see if Azula noticed, and would come following me.

She didn't. This time, I snuck past the guards, which required me to climb the cliff, because their torches lit the bottom half of the ladders.

I stepped out onto the arena, and then started making my way down to the city. I hurried, running faster the further I got from camp, until I emerged into the jungle trail.

Azula said she posted guards around the city to prevent exactly what I was currently trying to enact, but I didn't know where they were. if I'd asked, she would have been suspicious, and she probably would have lied.

I hadn't seen them when we entered and exited the city, but that didn't really give me much to go on.

I stopped running. The foliage above me was thick enough it only allowed in enough moonlight for me to make out the ferns that occasionally grew out from between the tiles. About halfway down the path, I took a right into the jungle.

It was darker than the path was, the canopy thicker, and the ground more treacherous. I walked as slowly and as quietly as I could, squinting at the ground before every step, but I wasn’t even close to silent.

I closed my eyes and listened, hoping against hope that the soldiers Azula had installed around the city would be incompetent, and ideally incompetent in pairs, so that I could hear them talk to each other.

The jungle was deathly silent.

I opened my eyes, now used to the dark of the jungle, and a black shadow resolved itself out of the shadows before me.

_ Azula always lies _ .

The wind blew, shifting the canopy above us, splattering the black robed figure with speckled moonlight. They twisted their head to look up at the moon, and then back to look at me.

The black robed figure was a woman, not much older than me, with a round, kind-looking face, and pitch black eyes.

The moonlight had stolen her night vision, and her eyes did not find me.

She turned back to the city, and took a silent step forward, slipping out of the moonlight, and back into darkness.

I took one step back, and then another, and then another. In a minor miracle, I didn't step on any twigs, anything that could snap and break. I stepped behind a tree, set my back to it, and started out at the darkness of the jungle, every unfortunately shaped shadow now staring back at me. 

Azula hadn't sent Wu's soldiers to guard the city. Azula had sent Onmitsu. Azula had sent the royal assassins.

Which was funny, because I hadn't seen them on the ship.

I took one breath.

Two breaths.

_ You're better with knives than an Onmitsu _ , Azula had said.

I stepped away from the tree, and turned back to the shadow that the Onmitsu had vanished into.

Now that I knew she was there, I could see easily see her silhouette against the city about ten feet in front of her. 

The jungle grew lighter the closer you got to the city, and darker the further you got from the city. I had a structural advantage here—it was easier for me to see the Onmitsu than it was for them to see me.

That wouldn’t be true when I was trying to get out, but it was true now, and I would take what I could get.

The city that had felt so large when Azula and I were mapping it out now felt very, very small. The blocks weren't real blocks—they only had one building each, and none of them were the size of a proper manor. I'd guessed at the size—a mile by two miles—but I was assuming the blocks were a tenth of a mile each. If they were half that, then the city was half a mile by a mile.

The roads weren't quite straight, they zigged and zagged, but on the truly straight roads, like the one leading up to the main pyramid and the one leading away from it, you could easily see all the way to jungle. If the cross-wise streets had been properly straight, you could probably see from one side of the city to the other.

From where I was standing in the woods, I could easily see the opening of three roads laid out before me, and sort of see two more, which covered half the width of the city.

Twenty Onmitsu could easily cover the entire city, with no need for moving patrols, which meant no way in without creating a distraction.

I moved back behind the tree, and then turned to look out at the jungle to my right, searching the darkness of the jungle for another black robed figure.

I didn't find one. If I there were twenty of them, they'd be three blocks over, which was altogether too far for me to pick out in the darkness.

I slipped between the trees, checking the trees before each block as I passed them, and sure enough, there, standing in the shadows of the jungle at the mouth of the third road was a black shape, cut out of the light of the city.

Great.

I loved being right.

I could check to see if the entire city was covered—twenty Onmitsu was a lot, Azula may not have had that many—but if she did, then I would have wasted hours on nothing.

I slipped back through the trees, and stepped out onto the path.

I could walk in. Azula probably didn't give the Onmitsu orders to kill me. 

I could walk in, check that no one was following me, and then wander through the city, making sure not to stop at the boy's pyramid for longer than anywhere else. 

Azula would find out, but she would just—

I stopped. I had been walking forward, towards the Onmitsu.

What was I thinking?

What was I trying to do?

The boy was starving, but all I had in my coat were three leftover rice balls, and twenty pieces of boar-moose jerky. I could go into the city, and if I got caught, I would lead them directly to the boy. Even if I didn't, if Azula woke while I was gone, she'd be suspicious, and the first place she would go would be the basement where I'd been "admiring the scenery".

I couldn't take the boy into the jungle. I didn't know if this island had jungle crawlers, but it probably did. The only safe places on this island were the city, our camp, and wherever the hell his people were hiding.

The best outcome was that I went to the basement, and found him gone. If I didn't, then I would have damned him to be caught.

With the dragon, I had had a plan. One that would have gotten the boy to safety, wouldn't have gotten him killed.

I had chased Azula because I thought she would have killed the boy, and I was going to try to stop her.

But that wasn't true now. She didn't know he existed.

The best way to keep him safe, the best way to keep him from her was to leave.

To leave him alone, starving, and terrified, in the middle of an empty city, crawling with people who wanted to do him harm.

I'd think of something.

I just couldn't think of it tonight.

I turned away from the city, and Azula smiled at me.

"Hello, Mai," she said, about fifteen feet away from me and pumping out heat like a cracked boiler. "What a lovely night we're having."

"I couldn't sleep," I said, my heart pounding almost loud enough to drown out my own words, "so I decided to take a walk to enjoy it."

"Yes," Azula said, closing the distance between us. "I can see that." Once she was close enough my burns began to ache, she stopped. "Earlier tonight," she said, "I was distracted. I thought you had betrayed me. I was tired, my best hope for regaining my flames had called me an abomination. I wasn't able to think straight."

She came a little closer, and the burned stripe on my face began to twinge.

"But now I'm feeling better, and I can," she said. "And it's starting to bug me—what were you doing in that arena? You thought you were following me—chasing after me. You didn't even wait long enough to put on socks and pull something over your underclothes. But I was going to the dragons' caves, Mai. If you were actually following me, you would have come up to the platform to wait for me there, but you weren't. Where did you think I was going, Mai?"

My arms and face burned. Before I could respond, Azula laughed.

"Don't worry, Mai," she said. "You don't need to answer, the answer is obvious."

She stepped past me.

I turned back to the city, and hesitated.

Azula glanced back at me with a smirk, and then stopped.

"Hello," she said to the jungle before her.

There was a moment of silence before the jungle responded.

"Princess."

"Come here, I have no interest in talking to a tree."

Another moment, and the Onmitsu emerged from the jungle, her round, soft face expressionless.

"As you wish, Princess," the Onmitsu said.

Azula wasn't looking at her, though, she was looking at me.

"You don't look surprised, Mai. Why is that?"

"I saw them on the ship," I lied.

"Of course," Azula said, turning back to the Onmitsu. "Kanako, do you know who this is?"

She pointed at me, because Princesses don't need to learn manners.

The Onmitsu's black gaze turned me, and Kanako looked at me like she was seeing a particularly uninteresting spider-roach.

She turned back to Azula. "It's your companion, Lady Mai," she said.

"Yes, good," Azula said. "Have you seen her tonight?"

Kanako turned back to me, and the complete disregard in her eyes reminded me of my mother.

"No."

"That's funny," Azula said. "Because I saw her come out of the jungle behind you less than five minutes ago."

Kanako bowed her head, and slid her gaze back at me, her upper lip twisting with disgust.

"Now, now," Azula said, her voice taking the mock-conciliatory tone she liked to use when she was humiliating someone. "It's your own incompetence that's at fault, here, don't blame Mai for being better than you."

With what looked like active effort, Kanako pressed her lips back into a thin line.

"Has anyone raised the alarm?" Azula asked. 

Kanako shook her head.

"No, Princess."

Azula smirked at me.

"Wow, Mai," she said. "I'm impressed."

Yeah, I would be impressed, too.

"But you," Azula said to Kanako, "you're useless, get out of my sight."

Kanako's face twitched, and as she turned, the gaze she sent me was cold, and murderous. It probably would have been frightening, if I hadn't spent most of my life in the company of Azula, who liked to threaten your life for just about anything.

"Wait."

Kanako stopped at the edge of the path.

"If any of you so much as lay a finger on Mai, I'll have you all burned alive."

Ah, there it was.

"We would never dream of it, Princess," Kanako lied, and stepped into the jungle.

"Onmitsu," Azula said, disgusted. "If they're going to be so rebellious, the least they could do is be useful."

She turned back to the city, and started to head to the tree that marked the entrance of the city, currently framed by an off-white glow.

"Come now, Mai," she said. "Let's go visit whatever it was you were trying to protect from me, and I can show you how pointless it is to try and hide things from me."

I followed her, steps heavy.

We ducked under the wide branches of the tree at the mouth of the trail, and out into the city.

The eerie white light of the mostly fully moon gave the entire city an unearthly glow, like we had accidentally wandered into the spirit world.

Azula must have had the same thought, because she sparked red flames at her fingertips to ensure we hadn't.

"Well," she said. "Lead the way, you've already been here tonight, haven't you?"

"I was just out for a walk," I lied. "I didn't come into the city—even if I had wanted to, I wouldn't have been able to get past the Onmitsu."

Azula snorted.

"Fine," she said, moving closer to me. "Be that way."

She was thankfully a bit cooler than she had been when she had first found me, and my burns remained blissfully cool.

She peered at my face, and then her gaze slid off of me as she thought for a moment.

"Oh," she said. "Oh, of course."

She laughed, stepping away from me.

"I was going to ask, and see what you responded to, but it's that basement isn't it?"

She kept laughing, shaking her head.

"Agni, I'm so foolish— _ admiring the scenery _ . And you even re-opened the cellar door!"

Her laugh was full-bellied and loud enough to echo against the stone walls around us, coming back at me from every angle.

“I saw the inside of that basement, though,” she said, after she’d finished laughing. She leaned in towards me. “How did you hide whoever you found in there from me?”

I didn’t say anything, because there wasn’t anything to say.

“I guess I’ll find out soon enough.”

She turned, and started walking away, deeper into the city, and I followed her, this time without being asked.

“So who did you find? Was it a child? I bet it was a child.”

“I didn't find anything, Princess," I lied. "I was just out for a walk."

Azula glanced back at me with her eyebrows furrowed into a scowl as we stepped out into the clearing surrounding the pyramid.

"Mai," she said. "Do you know what happens to other people when they lie to me as brazenly as you do?"

I did.

( _ Some things are with dying for _ , I didn't say.)

"I'm not lying," I said instead.

Maybe the child left.

Maybe the child isn't been left behind.

Maybe the child had half of a brain.

In the grey Azula's eyes glowed in the moonlight, I saw real, genuine anger, imperfectly hidden. When she realized I had tricked her, she had laughed.

But so obviously lying to her face didn't seem to be so easily forgiven.

She turned away before her expression could complete its transformation into a mask of disgust.

The rest of the way, we walked in silence. Through the city that felt more like a ghost town than it ever had before, the shadows longer, darker and more active than they had been in the light.

It looked like the ghost town Azula was actively trying to make it properly become.

My gaze fell to my feet, where the ground was soft, well tilled, but barren. what sort of culture, I couldn't help but wonder, would decorate with tilled, lifeless, dirt.

We were walking through the clearing around The Pryamid, and the soil looked lush, a deep, thick brown, and had to have easily taken to any seed that blew upon it. The land was actively barren, someone, probably many someones had to actively work to keep anything from taking root.

The rest of the city was overgrown, the pyramid at the center of clearing covered in ivy, but the ground beneath our feet was barren.

I followed the footsteps Azula left in the dirt, and looking at them, I finally realized Azula wasn’t in her full military uniform. I looked up, at her back, walking five feet in front of me, and saw that she was still mostly in her sleepwear, with her cloak pulled on. She wasn’t wearing her boots, but a soft pair of slippers I didn’t know she had brought onto the beach with us.

She had followed me like this, but why?

We stepped out of the clearing, back into the streets, where our footsteps weren’t quite so quiet, and no matter how I distracted myself, we were soon stopped in front of the mini-pyramid I was still pretending hadn’t held a child.

“Any new lies you want to tell me before we go in?” Azula asked, not turning to look at me, her shoulders rigid, her arms tense.

_ No new lies _ , I didn’t say.

“I’m not lying,” I lied instead.

I didn’t think about what would happen if the child was still in that basement, when Azula was presented with evidence of just how pitiful my lies had been. I didn’t think about what would happen in that basement if she found nothing.

How sure was she that there was a child in that basement? What would she be willing to do to me to find a child I hadn’t hid?

It didn’t matter, she was already walking up the steps, me half a step beyond her.

We ducked into the startling darkness of the pyramid, and Azula sparked a ball of red flame in her right hand, illuminating the room with a flickering glow that didn’t quite illuminate any of the shadows.

She took a step forward, towards the still open cellar door, and I reached out for her, but didn’t come close to catching her.

She noticed all the same, and turned back to me, the color of her eyes renewed in the orange light of her flames.

“Just what are you trying to do with that hand,” she asked, “other than lose it?”

Nothing.

_ Some things are worth dying for _ , I had thought I had wanted to say.

But obviously, I didn’t think this was one of them, because I let my hand fall without a word.

Azula stepped forward, and fell into the blackness of the cellar below.

I hesitated, until I remembered that Azula was alone in a room with a Sun Warrior child.

It was silent. Maybe―

“Hello, there,” Azula said.

Before her, lit by flickering orange light, doing his best not to cower, was the child, just as dirty and as thin as he had been.

“Imagine seeing you here.”

Azula turned back to me, and the fury in her eyes had abated into a grim sort of satisfaction.

“Still want to lie to me, Mai?” she asked, voice pitched low, only barely loud enough for me to make out the words, too quiet for the boy to hear. "Still want to tell me there's nothing here to be found?"

I didn't.

I hadn't wanted to, in the first place.

But I hadn’t really had a choice.

"Please," I said, beginning to lower myself to the ground. "Don't—"

The room was plunged into darkness as the hand Azula had set aflame shot across the distance between us, and grabbed my the front of my robe before I could kneel.

"What do you think you're doing, Mai,"she said in the darkness, words easier to make out with her close enough I could feel her breath hot on my face. "You would kneel for this child, this peasant?"

It was the least I could do, really. It was my fault he had been found. My fault that his guardian dragon had been driven away, where they couldn't help him, couldn't realize he needed help.

Azula hauled me back straight, got a little closer, relit her right hand now that was no longer going to set me on fire.

"The first time you kneel before me, it would be for this child?" She was lit from below, decorating her face in all manner of ghastly and unnatural shadows, but the gold of her eyes shone bright.

Azula had a funny way of counting things, sometimes.

"Yes."

There was a moment in which they was murder in Azula's eyes like I'd never seen before. If looks could kill, I'd often heard said, but never like this.

Never―except, hadn’t I seen the same look, two nights ago? Where had that been? I couldn’t quite remember.

But then it was gone, like it had never been.

“What a waste,” she said, like it was nothing, like she hadn’t just looked at me like she wanted the whole world to burn. “What sort of monster do you think I am?” she stepped back, returning her gaze to the boy, but still speaking too quietly for him to hear. “I would never hurt a child.”

"Sorry," she said to the boy, moving forward. "Are you okay, you look so thin? Everything's going to be okay—we'll find your parents so you can go home."

Her voice was high, and saccharine. she sounded like Ty Lee, which was probably the idea.

"You said you wanted to kill us all," the boy said, not falling for it.

"No I didn't," Azula lied without missing a beat. She crouched down before the boy, and when he flinched away, she shook her head. "You must have misheard me," she lied some more, because Azula always lied. "We're here because we need help from your dragon guardians. We wouldn't hurt you or your people, because then they wouldn't help us, would they?"

The boy continued to look utterly unconvinced, and scowled. He had apparently and very stupidly decided Azula wasn't a threat.

"You’re a liar," he spat, with the hate of a six year old.

"Our people are forgetting how to firebend," Azula continued, as if he hadn’t spoken. On cue, the flames in her palm flickered. "we've come to learn from the first firebenders, as a way to save our people."

The boy continued to scowl. "My mom's the strongest firebender on the island. She’s going to come find me, and she's going to kill you." He flicked his gaze to me. "You too," he added. And then, "all of you,” just in case we missed the memo. “and everything will be back to normal.”

“I’m sure she will,” Azula said, still in that lilting, Ty lee voice.

“You’re going to die,” he hissed. "You're all going to die, just like you wanted to do to us."

“Then why isn’t your mom here yet?” 

"The rest of the village is stopping her. They don't like me, they want me gone."

"Is that why they left you behind?"

He looked away, chewing on his front lip loud enough to be audible from where I still stood, across the room from him.

Far enough I could tell myself I couldn’t have saved him, when Azula tired of pretending to be Ty Lee, and decided to kill him instead.

"Yes."

The sleeves of my cloak were shorter than i liked, and I put my hands in my cloak's pockets instead of folding then before me, my fingertips brushing against the rice balls and boar-moose jerky I was carrying in my pockets.

"Is that why you don't know where they went?"

He looked away. 

"I know where they went. I just can't follow them."

All I could see of Azula's face was her right cheek, but I could see her smile.

“Are you not able to open the firebending locks in the grand pyramid?” she asked.

"I can open them," he said, angry. "But they locked it behind them—" He stopped, too late. "You're trying to trick me into telling you where they are!" he hissed.

She already had.

Which meant he no longer had any value to her.

“What’s your name?” I asked him, walking forward, so I could watch his death up close. He jumped, like he’d forgotten I was there.

He looked at me suspiciously as I knelt at Azula's side.

I drew a strip of boar-moose jerky from my cloak, and he slapped it out of my hands while looking longingly at it.

“Yaxkin,” he said, staring at it.

Azula's gaze bored into the side of my face, her eyes laughing at me.

“What's your mom's name?" I said, presenting him with another piece of jerky that he once again slapped out of my hand and into the ground.

"Yatzil," he said, still staring at the jerky. I took the handkerchief carrying the rest of the jerky out of my pocket, and laid out between us before taking one of the jerky he had slapped onto the ground and taking a bite.

He watched me do it, his golden gaze unblinking, following the jerky as I lifted it to my mouth and then staring at my mouth as I ground my way through the sweet sweet taste of dirt.

"Mom says it's important to tell people your name before you kill them, so I'm doing it for her,” he said, reaching for a piece of jerky hesitantly, and then very un-hesitantly shoving it all in his mouth.

_ You live in a village of a hundred people at most, who is she going around killing? _ I thought, but didn't say.

"Does she?"

"Yes."

He grabbed another, stuffed into his mouth as well.

“Look at you,” Azula said, tiring of not being the center of attention, but having apparently not yet decided to kill him. “You’re starving, we need to take you back with us, we can feed you. It’s not safe here.”

"I can't leave the city," he said, mouth once again full. "Mom said I can't go into the jungle. She said the jungle's full of wild animals that will try and eat me."

_ There is a wild animal who wants to eat you right here _ , I thought but didn't say, as I took the second piece of dirt jerky while he took the second to last piece of non-dirt jerky.

“We have a camp, on the beach,” Azula said. “You don’t have to be in the jungle.”

"I won't," he said. "My mom would know to find me here,” he said, sealing her fate. “I won't leave."

Azula was swallowing a smile again.

“Then I’ll leave someone here, to tell her where you are.”

“No! I―”

“I’m sorry,” Azula said, sounding almost like she understood what the word meant. He right arm flashed out across the distance between her and the boy almost faster than the eye could see, and before I could react, he had slumped forward onto the ground, face first. When she spoke again, her voice was back in its own octave. “I don’t actually care.”

As she said it, she was smiling a real, Azula smile, sharp not just around the edges but everywhere. 

“I guess you really didn’t make it into the city, Mai,” she said, snatching up the last piece of jerky and taking a bite. “I’m disappointed.”

“So sorry to disappoint,” I said, checking the boy's pulse.

It took me three tries to find it, but it was there.

Azula snorted, already finished with the last piece of jerky. She brushed me out of the way, and heaved the boy up over her shoulder. He flopped bonelessly onto her back, his hands dangling down to her waist.

The dirt jerky turned in my stomach.

“You didn’t really think I’d kill him, did you Mai?”

“Of course not,” I lied.

Azula turned back to the entrance, laughing a low, dark laugh under her breath, the boy flopping about with each step. 

She reached the faint circle of white light that shown down through the open cellar door, and looked back at me.

“If we can’t get that lock open, we have to have some way to draw his people out of hiding. It’s always amazed me the lengths people will go to protect a child.”

I said nothing, because there was nothing to say. Azula crouched down, preparing to launch herself up, out of the basement.

But then she hesitated.

“Oh, right,” she said, smiling. “I still haven’t thanked you for finding him for me. If you hadn’t led me to him, I probably would have never known he existed! And imagine how hard it would be to draw the sun warriors out of hiding if I didn’t have a child as a hostage.” She was smiling at me then like she had smiled at me when Zuko set my hair on fire, like she had smiled at me when the doctor had told me I might have a permanent bald spot. “Thank you, Mai,” she said. “I couldn’t have done it without you.”

Then she waited, smiling.

“You’re welcome, Princess,” I said.

With a low, grating chuckle, she crouched again, and shot out of the cellar, leaving me in darkness with nothing but the echoes of her laugh to keep my company.


	12. Book 1 - Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CW: References to dismemberment.

The grand pyramid that rose up in the middle of the city was even bigger up close.

We were at the foot of the stairs that walked up the front of pyramid, in the early morning sun that was swelteringly hot, despite the fact it was early enough it was falling on us almost sideways.

The pyramid had three levels―a large stone base that sat on the carefully manicured field of dirt—and then another level, over a hundred feet up that held two smaller pyramids, like perched like gargoyles on the edge, and then finally, the actual top, far, far above us. Twice, three times the height of the second platform.

There was a stone flame carved into the top of it―although I wouldn’t know it from where I stood. It could be seen from either entrance of the city, but from the base of the pyramid, the angle rendered it unrecognizable.

We were standing in the sun on the first platform while Azula stared at the intricate patterned caved in the sloped walls before us. I had expected more carvings of Ran and the red dragon, but that wasn’t what we got.

We got mosaics, instead. Four on one side of the unnecessarily wide stairs, another four on the other.

The mosaic closest to us, in little square stone tiles, painted bright, brilliant colors, we saw massive stone walls, topped with long green… somethings. It wasn’t clear with the resolution of half an inch tiles, but they bent and twisted irregularly enough that my best guess was “ribbons”. Where they were supposed to come from, I didn’t know.

Beside it was a mosaic of the lip of a volcano, the air above it dotted with black smoke and the sky covered in a massive black cloud. It was a lot… less interesting than the walls had been, which was saying something.

Azula, however, seemed to find it  _ terribly _ interesting, so here we were.

Standing in the sun.

Waiting.

Sweating.

Itching.

I tried not to, but the skin on my forearms was already beginning to peel. It was peeling in that real half-assed way burns do before they really start coming off. They can’t yet come off on sheets, just in sad little flakes—

Azula strode before me, towards the stairs, and I followed her, past a mosaic of a temple under the moon, beside a wood tower and a very familiar looking pair of mountain peaks.

I shook the nasty gross skin off of where they had gotten stuck to my sleeves, and put a bit of pressure over where I had picked at my right forearm hard enough to bleed.

This was fine.

I came to a stop beside her.

This side had a sheet of marble lined with very gross-looking veins of bright red… something next to white temple on a barren mountaintop.

“Oh wow,” I said. “What exquisite artistry. It’s definitely worth sweating here in the sun for.”

Azula looked over at me, looking at me like a praying moth looks upon its mate when it evaluates whether it should eat it or not.

“Yes,” she said, taking another couple steps forward, and glancing around the corner.

Then, probably as punishment for being passive aggressive at her, she walked us all the way around the base of the platform.

Forest, river, sea, boiling sea, snow covered mountain, cave, obelisk, and on and on and on.

Have I mentioned how unnecessarily large the pyramid was?

It was very unnecessarily large.

I didn’t know what they did here, but I was sure it wasn’t important enough to take up a tenth of city’s area.

I had never seen so many mosaics in my life and the rest of the world was starting to look uncomfortably blocky.

“Oh no,” I said, as we arrived back at the stairs. “Are we already back here, I was having so much—”

“What do you think this is?” Azula interrupted me, laying a hand on the volcano mosaic.

I paused, but Azula looked serious.

“A caldera,” I supplied.

“No, don’t be intentionally dense,” Azula said, tapping one of her claws on one of the pitch black smoke tiles. They were little pluses, a single black tile surrounded by four more on each side. “These, what do you think these are?”

I paused again, but Azula was no longer looking at me. She was looking at the tile she was tapping with her finger.

“Smoke?” I offered.

“There was a fire, on the back side, and it drew smoke with single grey tiles, not five black ones. And the fire didn’t have these clouds, why are they here?”

She looked at me, meaningfully.

I shrugged.

She moved to the mosaic of the walls, and tapped the green… things.

“And these, what are these? Are they supposed to be ribbons, the aurora?”

I didn’t know.

I also didn’t really care.

“Princess, these people have never left this island.”

“But they have! They have pictures of a deciduous forest, and stone canyon, red mountains, plains. What was so important about them they painted them onto their holiest site?”

Her eyes as she looked at me were a bright gold, and intense. I could feel the temperature around us rise as she spoke.

“You saw the map yesterday. It was accurate—as accurate as any of the maps in the fire nation were, until maybe a century ago, how did they draw that, why did they put those symbols where they did? Some of them were right, the Western Fire Temple, the Southern Air Temple, but some of them were so wrong. And Mai—” she said, gesturing back at the walls of the platform, “—when you think of a walled city, what do you think of? When you think of a caldera, where do you think of?”

I blinked.

“Why did they draw Ba Sing Se and Caldera like this? The caldera hasn’t erupted in human memory, and Ba Sing Se doesn’t fly banners like these.” She said it with remarkable confidence, despite the fact we both knew she didn’t know shit about Ba Sing Se. Azula had refused to listen in class when we were taught about the other nations.

“I don’t know, Princess.”

“Yes,” Azula agreed, stepping back. Running her nails over the tiles of the platform, despite the horrible screeching noise she was producing. “Yes,” she repeated, because Azula was incapable of admitting she didn’t know something.

After a moment of staring cryptically off into the distance, she shook her head free, and started off up the stairs.

“Come on now, Mai. Stop dawdling.”

“My apologies, Princess,” I said, having to run to catch up to her. “Sorry for all that dawdling I was doing.”

“I forgive you,” she said imperiously.

I strained myself not rolling my eyes, and followed Azula up, and up, and up, and then up some more The city fell away beneath us, and the massive flame decorating the top of the pyramid came properly into view. 

The opening in the pyramid that had looked so small from the ground was actually enormous, twice as tall as we were, and half again as wide. Dazzled as we were by the sun, shining horizontally almost directly into our eyes, the opening yawning like a dragon’s maw, faint red light glittering from within.

We stepped through the door, and I spent a moment blinking to try and see through the darkness, while Azula moved forward without hesitation, because wasp hawks can see just as well into the darkness as they can in the light.

When my vision finally returned to me, Azula was standing in the center of a massive circle of statues, looking up at the ceiling.

There was only one room, but it was large enough to fit most of our camp, because everything about this pyramid was truly unnecessary in its scale.

There were lines of torches running up the domed ceiling, in rows and rows, higher than everyone could ever reach because  _ firebending _ , until the dome stopped existing altogether, giving us a clear sight of pale blue of the morning sky.

At noon, this room was probably lit up like Founding Day, but it wasn’t noon, so the room was just lit by red crystals embedded in the walls that didn’t shine so much ooze a pale red light.

It made everything the color of blood, because, once again, firebenders.

I returned my gaze back to Azula, where she stood on the ground before one of the enormous statues. She had to crane her head to look up at it, because it was two times her size, maybe more.

The statues, as I looked at them, painted an image, of sorts. An image I recognized, although I’d never seen it painted quite so ostentatiously, from the scrolls of sword forms my mother had forced upon me when I was young.

The motions, were alien, like nothing I’d ever seen before, more like what I had always imagined waterbending to be than anything else, but we were in a room at the top of a pyramid constructed by the sun warriors, with an enormous carved stone as decoration, which really only left one option.

“Is this a firebending form?”

“Yes,” Azula said, turning away from the enormous status she had been gazing upon to meet my gaze, her pale skin flushed by the red light. “Don’t you recognize it?”

“I’ve never seen anything like it,” I said honestly.

Azula hummed, turning away from me, and stepping her way down the set of statues, her steps carving out an irregular beat, undoubtedly according to her imagined rhythm of the form the statues were putting on display.

She reached the end, and turned back to me.

“Yes you have,” she said. “Don’t you remember, when we went to that circus when we were nine? Ty Lee spilled those fireflakes down your robe in front of Zuzu.”

That was funny.

I seemed to remember that Azula tipped Ty Lee’s fire flakes down my robe.

“This is the form the fire throwers used,” she said, spreading her hands.

I blinked, and the motions started to look familiar. I remembered Azula’s offbeat steps, and I could almost see the way the form would fall together.

“These were the firebending forms taught in the military academy before great grandpa’s reforms. This used to be what firebending used to look like. We still have some scrolls of these forms in the palace library.”

I looked at the statues again, and tried to imagine Azula, flowing through the poses, blue flames blooming from her fists at each beat.

I couldn’t.

It was too… smooth?

Kind?

“Yes,” Azula said, bringing my attention back to her. “They’re not very  _ good  _ forms,” she said with a laugh. “That’s why great grandpa came up with new ones. It’s comforting that the glorious sun warriors still use forms like this, for when we’re inevitably going to have to fight them. Shouldn’t be too hard, even with the garbage we have on our ship.”

She was standing exactly opposite me, and opposite the opening in the ring of statues, leaning back against the neck high platform holding the statues. Above her head, two statues fists met, framing Azula in a way that was unpleasantly apt.

“We could probably do it all by ourselves,” Azula said, smiling her  _ other people are stupid and you are stupid, but you’re not as stupid as they are  _ smile. She laughed at the thought, and it wasn’t the  _ I’m better than you _ laugh she had laughed a moment before, but her  _ people are going to die _ laugh. “What do you say, Mai?”

Wow, what an offer.

“I think I’d rather have the reinforcements,” I said.

_ I think I’d rather not do any genocide at all _ , I didn’t say.

Azula snorted, pushing herself off of the platform she had been leaning on, and stretching her arms out wide on either side of her.

“Anyways,” she said, flexing her fingers and cracking her knuckles. “The problem with these forms is they run on things like love and passion and creativity, in comparison to great grandpa’s forms, which run on things like anger and hatred.” She walked towards me, towards the center of the lotus set in the center of the statues. “It sounds nice, but the thing is—love and passion and creativity, they’re all finite, but anger and hatred—” she twisted her hands and rose them into the air, and every single torch in the room alit with a bright red flame “—they’re limitless.”

We could just put aside how much of the last one hundred years could be explained by that statement. Put it aside.

Never think about it again.

“I see,” I said.

Azula shook her head at my lack of enthusiasm for the glorious power of anger and hatred.

“They didn’t build this pyramid for a form like this,” Azula said, turning her face up to the orange light of her torches, squinting at the ceiling. “There has to be something more.”

She twisted her head, while I glanced back out at the bright white wall that was the opening to the outside. I could see the ocean in the distance. It didn’t look that far away, from up here. I couldn’t even see the city.

“Did you know,” Azula said, prompting me to turn back to her, “that a firebending form, correctly performed, always ends with a lightning strike?”

I was about ninety percent sure that was a lie, but instead of electing to commit suicide, I said “No.”

“They are. Almost everyone is a terrible at firebending, so you’d never know,” she said, walking back to where the two statues met. “But this form is no exception. You’re supposed to start gathering the lightning at the first of those statues, and release it here.”

She rolled her shoulders, and the air sparked. A soft but persistent crackling, an uncomfortable pressure as Azula circled her left hand, then her right, and I closed my eyes before lightning split the air, arching off of Azula’s hand and crashing into the wall of the chamber.

_ I’m sorry about your pyramid, Mr and Mrs. Sun Warrior. The Princess of the Fire Nation decided it would be a good idea to shoot lightning at the walls. _

But when I opened my eyes, the wall of the chamber wasn’t blown away, or even scorched. There was a hole where Azula had shot her lightning, but it didn’t lock blasted out of the rock. I looked at the other wall of the chamber, the one that had not yet weathered Azula’s wrath, and found a matching hole. Both of them were in a straight line from the upper arm of each statue standing above Azula.

Azula rolled her shoulders again, first the right hand, and then left, and I almost forgot to close my eyes for the crash.

“Oh,” Azula said, “that’s cute.”

I opened my eyes, and her back didn’t look like she actually thought it was cute.

Whatever it was.

Azula rolled her shoulders again, but she didn’t walk through the form I had seen a hundred times before. She didn’t extend either arm, didn’t perform the three steps she had had to do when she was first learning lightning, she just stood there, hands folded out of my sight, as the tension in the air got hard enough to choke on.

I tried not to breathe the air burning like acid, bearing down on me like if I opened my mouth it would rush in and rip me apart from the inside.

Very slowly, Azula extended both of her arms, and then snapped them out the last couple inches, and this time, I forgot to blink.

The image of Azula, back straight beneath two enormous bronze statues, both arms extended, bright white bolts of lightning connecting her to each wall was burned into my retinas.

I choked on nothing as I sucked in a breath in pain, stumbling back from Azula, and clenching my eyes shut.

I thought I’d learned better than this.

I was wrong.

When I finally opened my eyes, Azula was standing before me, a wide smile splitting her face.

“You watched me,” she said. “You always closed your eyes before.”

“I assure you, it wasn’t intentional.”

Azula’s smile faltered, but didn’t fall.

She paused for a second, and then said in a voice that sounded uncomfortably like Ty Lee, “Dad can’t even do that.”

She laughed, a low chuckle that didn’t even sound violent.

“Congratulations,” I said, like I said congratulations when she had first bent lightning, and when she had first bent lightning without making the steps, but I wasn’t surprised. As far as I was concerned, Azula had surpassed Ozai at age eight. I had seen the look on Ozai’s face when he saw Azula bend blue flames for the first time.

Azula seemed to still have some fantastical ideas about her father’s prowess, though, and criticizing the Fire Lord didn’t seem like a great plan, so I had yet to try and disabuse her of that notion.

“If that child could really open this room, then maybe we have something to worry about with these Sun Warriors after all,” Azula said, not acknowledging my congratulations because she never had, stepping around me, and walking back to the entrance behind me.

_ Is that it? _ I found myself thinking as I turned to follow her. I was two steps forward before I saw that outside of a narrow strip leading to the entrance, the entire floor around the statues had fallen away.

I followed Azula, and found a staircase leading away to the right from the strip of floor that remained, leading down into the darkness. To the left was a black pit that looked uncomfortably endless.

Azula turned right, and stepped down onto the staircase, and a line of torches on the polished stone wall lit up along the length of the stairs way before it.

I looked down at the stairs beneath me, the stairs a reddish brown that didn’t match the color that the floor had been. I glanced at the platform holding the statues which were now standing over nothing.

I had no idea where the floor had gone. I had no idea what could have been done to the floor. I had no idea how Azula’s lightning had caused the floor to vanish.

Which was funny, because the Fire Nation was supposed to be the most advanced nation in the world.

“Mai,” Azula called to me, and I turned to find her twenty stairs ahead of me. “Stop dawdling.”

I stopped dawdling.

“My apologies, Princess,” I said, not sorry enough to hurry. Azula didn’t react to my apology at all, which wasn’t very surprising, and instead waited for me, which was.

I reached her, and followed her gaze up to the platform we had come from.

The platforms that held the statues were held up by enormous stone buttresses that ran down the opposite side of the cavern we were now in, but that wasn’t what Azula was staring at.

She was staring at the lotus pattern that had been painted on the underside of the floor we had been standing on. 

By the time I had turned back to her, she had already tired of staring at it, and was striding down the stairs, two stairs at a time.

I followed her, but there was a flickering out of the corner of my eye. Orange light flickering in and out of focus. I stopped, and looked back up at the floor we had come from once again.

From this angle, it was a lot more obvious. I could see faint shapes behind it, familiar shapes, and dots of orange behind that.

I could see through the floor. I was looking at the statues and the torches Azula had lit through the floor.

I shivered at the thought I had been standing over something so thin over…

I didn’t bother to check how far the black pit beyond the staircase fell.

As we went further down, the cavern expanded, growing wider the further down we got. Before us, torches lit themselves, but there were no walls of torches here like there were in the chamber above, only one torch every five or ten feet. Looking up, you could see the spiralling route back up to the chamber, with its tens (hundreds?) of torches shining down upon us. The rest of the chamber was pitch black.

This was great.

I loved this.

What a great city.

A little bit further down, we came upon another set of statues, set in a circle, with an opening facing a short platform attached to the stairs. They were just like the ones above us, except the cavern was wider here, so there were more statues—twenty statues, this time. But they had the same cadence to them, that same softness that looked all wrong.

Also, instead of having a solid platform with a lotus painted in it in the center of them, they just had a thin walkway before the statues, maybe five feet wide, within which was a bottomless pit.

Azula, of course, didn’t just stop to look at them, she stopped to walk them. She walked onto the tiny, incredibly flimsy looking platform, and walked through the poses, the cadence of her feet still with that odd, lilting rhythm.

She stopped beneath the statues where the forms met. These two were twisted towards us, heads facing towards each other, lower fists touching and upper fists raised towards the sky, two fingers extended in a very familiar stance.

Azula looked up, following the fingers, and then walked back around the walkway.

“Is this another of those old forms?” I asked her, once she was back in earshot, because she looked like she wanted to be asked.

“Yes,” she said. “It's the second form.”

“Was the one up there the first?”

Azula paused, and looked up. “We had lost the scroll for the first form,” she said. “That form was in a scroll for teaching bending to children.”

I paused, and the silence between us was heavy.

“Are they all paired like that?”

Azula glanced back to the statues, and then turned back to the stairs.

“None of our scrolls described any of the old forms as paired forms,” she said.

Again, a heavy silence fell between us, and this time, I didn’t break it.

Further down we went, down and down and then down some more.

We passed form after form after form. At each from, Azula stopped, and walked the form, start to finish, before she walked back to me.

She wasn’t smiling her top-of-the-world smile anymore. She walked it like a funeral.

Or well, she walked it like anyone else would walk a funeral.

Down and down we went.

It felt like an eternity. It felt like we were walking further down than we had walked up to get into the pyramid, but that was probably an illusion created by circling of the stairs we were walking down.

The air around us grew cooler, until it was tolerable, and then until it was cool.

Ten forms we passed, eleven forms, twelve.

It was cold.

I slipped my hands into my sleeves, and a thirteenth set of statues appeared below us, the largest yet. There had to be over one hundred.

And, I realized, a moment later, solid ground.

We stepped out the ground, and Azula stopped and faced the largest ring of statues.

“The thirteenth form?” I guessed.

“There was no thirteenth form,” Azula said. “The eleventh was the last form.”

I opened my mouth to respond, but found no words to say. 

“We’d lost the seventh and the third, too. They weren’t in any of the children’s scrolls.”

Azula flicked a hand, and the line of torches that lined the walls lit.

She stepped into the ring, and only as my eyes followed her did I see it. An enormous firebending lock, like the one we had seen when we had taken a field trip to the fire temple, only larger.

So, so much larger.

Because nothing in this stupid pyramid could be normal sized.

Azula stepped into the circle of statues, and began to walk down the line of statues. I took the opportunity to shiver, because without Azula at my side, it was now an awful lot colder. I looked up, and could see not just the circling path we had taken down the enormous cavern, but also the twelve concentric rings, all the way up to the lotus platform, which I could just barely see in the distance.

It had taken us long enough to get here that the platform was brighter now than it had been, better lit by the massive hole in its ceiling.

I dropped my gaze back to the statues, and Azula was only halfway through the statues, walking through them one by one, her feet beating out the rhythm of an alien sort of firebending against the ground.

I waited, and waited, and she finally reached the end. Two statues, bent together in the same pose as they had in the first form at the top of the pyramid.

Across the cavern, Azula looked very small, and the two enormous statues almost human sized. Azula walked towards me, but when she reached the center of the cavern, her steps faltered, and she craned her neck up.

She took one shuffling step forward, and then another, and then another.

She stopped, and turned back to me. She pressed her fists together, and bowed.

It was an uncomfortable feeling, being bowed to by the Crown Princess of the Fire Nation, but thankfully it didn’t last.

She spun, spreading her hands in a pose that looked a lot more familiar on her than it had on the statues above me.

I remembered now.

The fire thrower Azula had talked about. Seeing Azula with her hands held up on both sides of her, like she was presenting a gift, I remembered the fire thrower. A girl, she had looked so old then, but she couldn’t be older than I was now. 

And, I remembered, as she held her hands up, she smiled.

Azula began to bend. Slow, leisurely flames bloomed from her mostly open palms. Flames that were orange, rather than red, and dissipated harmlessly into the air, like they couldn’t hurt a fly. With each step, the air grew harsher, heavier, until Azula fell into the fifth and final stance, and lightning flashed into the air.

I didn’t close my eyes, and blinked away the afterimage.

It occurred to me now that in each of the forms above us, the final stance always ended with one hand pointed towards the sky, far away from the…

Audience.

Azula didn’t stop. She continued into the second form, because the second form’s statues began where the first form’s stopped.

Twenty poses, this time, orange flames dissipating into the air, heating up the cold air and doing little else, until Azula hit the final stance, and lightning flashed into the air.

As Azula performed the third form, the fourth form, she spiraled out from where she had started, just like each of the forms had grown wider as we had descended on our spiral staircase.

Each form flowed into the next, like their true shape was a single form, hundreds and hundreds of stances long.

And Azula went through them all. The fifth form, the sixth form, the seventh form. I had seen Azula firebend in many ways, but never like this. Azula bent to hurt people. She bent to light torches. She bent to scare people.

Azula always bent with a purpose, but there was no purpose here.

The fire wasn’t the means to anything here, but simply an end unto itself. A decoration in the shape of the form.

Eighth form, ninth form, tenth form. Azula didn’t falter, hesitate, or stumble.

Azula was the greatest firebender in the world. She came around for the beginning of the eleventh form, her face was streaming with sweat like I had never seen before, but her face was…

Calm.

She wasn’t frowning, wasn’t straining, but she wasn’t maintaining a frozen mask, either.

She wasn’t smiling, but she almost was.

Eleventh, twelfth.

She came around one last time, and she was much closer now than she had been when she started. Lightning blasted close enough I could feel the heat of it on my face, and she spun past me from the end of the twelfth form, and into the thirteenth.

I watched her, step by step, until she reached the final pose, and lightning flashed through the air one last time.

Then she crumpled to the ground.

“Princess!” 

I ran into the circle, but Azula was already picking herself up off the ground, using the platform holding the final statues as leverage.

“Like I said,” Azula said with a smile that was probably trying to be haughty but wasn’t quite managing it. “They’re bad forms. You can only—” she was interrupted by a heaving pant, “—have so much ‘passion’ and… whatever.”

Her hand slipped off of the platform, and she slid back to the ground, this time a little more gracefully than before. She laid her back against the stone of the platform, and took deep, heaving breaths.

I had seen Azula train before. I had seen her with Lo and Li, performing one form twenty times, fifty times, over and over again.

I had barely ever seen her sweat.

_ Anger and hatred are limitless _ .

“I watched you this time,” I said.

Azula blinked dully, and her gaze fell down to me. She blinked again as my words clicked into place, and she smiled.

“Did you?”

“Yes.”

She laughed. “Why couldn’t you have picked a better form to actually watch me perform?”

_ Because I don’t want to watch you practice killing people _ , I didn’t say.

I couldn’t think of a lie, so I didn’t say anything.

As I stood over her, I realized—

It wasn’t cold anymore.

Azula shifted beneath me, her movements uncomfortably lethargic. She blinked up at me like the movement took great effort, and then she spoke.

“Okay,” she said. “That’s enough lazing about for one day.”

Then she forced me to take a step back as she snapped both of her fists into the air, and created a fountain of bright red flame.

The heat of it hit me like a physical thing, sending me back another step, and then another.

Azula stood, the clouding in her eyes clearing, but not yet entirely gone.

“Move,” she said.

I moved. Right, out of her line of fire.

She drew her right fist back, and then drove it forward with a plume of bright red flame that made my burns itch in remembrance. She took a step forward, and another plume of red flame followed the first. Next was her right foot, then her left. 

Three more steps, a rhythm I remembered from watching Azula’s practices a hundred times, and I closed my eyes a moment before the roar of thunder split the air. I kept them closed as  _ tap tap tap _ , Azula moved the next three steps, and—

Another crash of thunder.

I opened my eyes.

The First Form.

Or, well, the first of Sozin’s forms.

“Yes,” Azula said, standing straight once again, wiping her face free of sweat she wasn’t sweating anymore. “What terrible forms.”

She turned back to me, and her lips twisted in smirk.

“You closed your eyes again, didn’t you?”

“I wanted to keep my retinas.”

She sneered.

“I’m so sorry real firebending forms aren’t pretty enough for you, Mai.”

Her tone made it abundantly clear that she didn’t want a response, so I didn’t give her one.

She walked back through the circle of statues, back to the two final statues, and then leapt up, and between their outstretched arms to land directly before the massive firebending lock I had somehow managed to forget.

Azula looked back at me expectantly, and I walked around the slow way, because I couldn’t jump to ten feet from a standstill.

When I arrived beside her, Azula was staring up at the lock. It was a pretty thing, enormous and endlessly interlocking. I was expecting to see the Ran and Ran’s partner decorating it, and they were, but they weren’t alone.

Intertwined between them and around them was a pearly white dragon, which I had seen nowhere else on the island. The three heads were lined up near the top of the door, Ran, the white dragon, and then Ran’s partner, their mouths open, but unlike the lock in the fire temple, they weren’t all facing forward, to be opened by five firebenders acting in concert.

They were all facing down, Ran and Ran’s partner facing in, all pointing towards where Azula now stood before them.

This was a lock designed to be opened by one person.

I had to wonder at what kind of people would create the thirteen sets of statues behind us, each form a mirrored pair, but would create their firebending lock to be opened by a single firebender.

I looked up, towards the long staircase that led up and up and up to the top of the pyramid above us, and I saw it more clearly now. With each level, the staircase traveled half the circumference of the cavern, tracing out the pattern a giant would take as they executed the forms. But there was only one staircase. Only one path through the forms. The clockwise path—the one Azula had taken, as she had run through the forms behind us.

Only one path, and only one door, to be opened by only one firebender.

Azula took the stance of the first statue above us, heels together, hands elevated on both sides of her. Her face started to relax, like it had when she had begun the forms, but then she hesitated.

Stopped.

She shifted her stance, feet spread apart, and then snapped her fists into the air in a violent strike.

Red fire burst forth from her fists.

The door didn’t open, although the Ran and Ran’s partner began to dance, began to unravel, but they were caught by the motionless white dragon.

A horrible screeching of metal against metal sounded throughout the cavern.

Azula opened her mouth, her chest tightened, and fire burst forth from between her lips.

She held that pose, body motionless, three streams of fire streaming forth, as the white dragon began to move, began to dance in tandem with its brethren, until they finally unravelled entirely, Ran on the left side, Ran’s partner on the right, and the white dragon in the center.

The white dragon split in half, and the metal wall behind the dragons opened.

The halves of the white dragon slipped past Azula with barely an inch to spare, and then came barreling towards me. I scrambled out of the way, around half of the white dragon, and found myself staring at the black metal within it as it passed me, instead of the open door that would be taking us to wherever the Sun Warriors were hiding.

I kept on watching it, until it crashed into the polished stone walls beyond with a slam.

The room was substantially darker than before, the closest torches now covered by enormous sheets of metal.

_ Ton, ton _ , I heard.

I slowly turned back to the where Azula had been standing, and found Azula standing inside of an enormous room full of a great many things Azula was ignoring. She was standing before a massive stone wall.

The stone wall she was standing before wasn’t like the rest of the stone in the cavern, not even like the stone in the (comparatively) small room Azula was now in.

Doors and walls have a certain sound to them. A little bit of hollowness, no matter how sturdy the door, how thick the wall.

_ Ton, ton _ , Azula knocked on the wall, harder this time.

This was not the sound of a door, or a wall.

It sounded an awful lot like knocking on a cliff.

Or perhaps the ground.

I took a step into the opulent room, which, in contrast to the golden fixtures, and gold lining on the walls, was filled with things like sheets, and pans, and clothes. Things that would look out of place in ruin that was supposed to be abandoned. I stepped beside Azula as she tired of knocking, and punched the wall for good measure.

The wall cracked.

But it didn’t break.

Azula took a step back, and then kicked the wall.

It cracked again, broken bits of wall crashing down around Azula’s foot.

“Maybe it’s just a wall,” I offered.

Azula gave me her  _ you’re an idiot look _ , but didn’t kick me or the door, so I’m pretty sure it was a win.

“Yes, I’m sure they decided to leave one of their walls looking like this when they were lining the rest with gold,” she said.

“Well,” I said, taking the corner of a sheet in my hands and rubbing my finger and thumb over the rough fabric, “they also stuffed it full of sheets, so I wouldn’t trust their fashion sense.”

Azula snorted.

“That boy said he knew where they went, but he couldn’t follow them.” She gestured at the wall. “This would explain it.”

“This is a firebending village,” I said. “How did they conjure up a stone wall so thick you couldn’t break it?”

“How did they make that floor disappear?” she asked.

Yes.

That was the question.

I shivered.

I didn’t like this city. These “ruins”.

It felt like I was looking at a world that was like my own, in which everything was just a little bit wrong. Firebenders, who bent like those statues. Ancient people, who made disappearing floors, created statues three times their size, built pyramids three hundred feet tall, and then hollowed them out again.

Firebenders, who split a mountain in half.

Azula walked past me and into an alcove I hadn’t seen from the outside that was a little less full of textiles than the room we were in.

She moved out of the doorway, and out of my sight, leaving me with only a view of…

A bookshelf?

I looked behind me, to the mirrored alcove on the opposite side of the sanctum. Another bookshelf, crammed full of scrolls, just like the ones before me.

I followed Azula into the alcove.

To say the room contained a lot of scrolls would be true, but wouldn’t really encompass just how densely the scrolls were packed into the shelves all around me. Shelves up to the ceiling, and each row in each shelf not packed so much stuffed with scrolls.

The way they were packed into each shelf didn’t look intentional, or particularly well considered. Tiny scrolls were packed in between the open areas of larger scrolls, and scrolls as wide as my first were intermingled with those twice that width or more.

The pattern they drew out was irregular, and dizzying.

To say I’d never seen so many scrolls in one place would be true, but not particularly complimentary.

I walked up to the closest of the shelves, and pulled a slim scroll from between the opening of three larger scrolls. It took me a moment to figure out how to open the scroll case, and slide out the contents into my hand.

I opened the scroll, and found the characters uncomfortably familiar. Earth Kingdom characters at least had the decency to look shrunken and alien.

It looked like the Fire Nation script, but not quite. The character were not quite ours, but closer than they were to the Earth Kingdom monstrosities.

The script itself was a script of the…

The Third Form.

The pattern that the third set of statues had acted out was written out before me, each pose with detailed notes on how to breathe, how to move, how long to hold it, along with additional drawings of the form from different angles.

The tone of the notes made it clear this was a scroll for teachers, rather than for students.

_ Many students will take a breath here, but this is a silent pose. A breath here will break the rhythm, and cause them to fail to produce the heavenly call. _

I didn’t know what a heavenly call was, but I also didn’t really care.

I re-rolled the scroll, pushed it back into its scollcase, and pressed the cap back onto the scroll.

I didn’t know which of the random openings in in the scrolls before me I had pulled it from, but considering the current state of the shelf, I was pretty sure no one cared.

When I raised my hand to push it back into the shelf, Azula’s hand caught my own, and she pried the scroll from my fingers, rather than asking me to give it to her like a normal person.

It was hot in the scroll room, I realized with the furnace that was Azula breathing over my shoulder. I took a step back from her, and when she didn’t seem to notice, I took another.

The room was nothing but scrolls. Scrolls, scrolls and more scrolls, all filled with Fire Nation characters saying things no one from the Fire Nation would ever say.

As I turned for the door, I hesitated.

Azula had the scroll open, and she was frowning at it.

She looked up at me, her eyes meeting mine because I had been too foolish to flee when I had the chance.

“Mai,” she said, turning the scroll to face me, like I could read it from fifteen feet away, “who does this look like to you?”

I blinked. I looked at the man in the scroll, and then back at her.

“I don’t recognize him,” I said, because obviously I didn’t.

“You should, he was the model for the third statues,” Azula said. “But that’s not what I mean.” She turned the scroll to glance at it once before before turning it back to me. “Doesn’t he look a little… Water Tribe, to you?”

I blinked.

I looked at the man on the scroll.

Thick black hair, hanging shaggy around his face, a beard along the line of his chin, a sort of softness around his eyes—

I looked back at Azula.

He did.

“I didn’t notice on the statues,” Azula said, re-rolling the scroll and stuffing it back into its case. “I wasn’t looking at their faces. But when I saw it over your shoulder… this man is a water tribesman. Why did they make their firebending statues of water tribesmen?”

She strode past me out of the mini-library, and I followed in her footsteps, out of the mini-library, but when I turned to the main cavern, I stopped in my tracks.. The main cavern was no longer lit by the faint orange light of the torches Azula lit when we arrived on the bottom floor.

Instead, it was lit up like it was high noon, the bronze of the statues lit with a white light so bright that I had to shield my eyes against the brightness.

Slowly, I followed in Azula's footsteps out into the main cavern, half expecting to find the entire top of the pyramid torn away.

I didn’t, of course, but when I turned my head up, dozens of suns shone down upon me from the walls of the cavern. I blinked, and the suns didn’t go away.

The walls, I realized, belatedly, weren’t just smooth, they were polished to a mirror sheen. The sun had finally risen above the hole in the ceiling, hundreds of feet above us, and that sun light was shining down upon us now, reflected dozens of times across the mirrored walls of the pyramid, until it was brighter here than it was outside.

Hotter than it was outside.

I could already feel sweet beading at my hairline, and starting to drip its way down my neck.

Azula had apparently been not at all surprised to see the inside of the cavern as bright as day, because she was standing on the platform holding the statues, peering up at the face of one statues.

I walked forward, up to the platform, and then begrudgingly hauled myself onto it to stand beside Azula.

I looked up at the face, and found a Fire Nation face staring back at me.

Or well, at the wall behind me.

The woman the statue was modeled after, she looked… not unlike that fire thrower we had seen at the circus, when we were nine.

Azula jumped down from the platform, and then began striding towards the stairs. I briefly considered not following her, waiting for here…

Under the twenty mirrored suns beating down upon me.

I followed her.

Azula climbed up onto the platform holding the statues performing the twelfth form with no fear, and I didn’t follow her this time.

I didn’t have to. I could see just fine from the platform.

The statues of the twelfth form were of a Water Tribeswoman, her hair tied into loops that I should have recognized the first time.

Azula lowered herself from the platform a lot slower than she had climbed up it, and then walked back to me.

Up we went again. Slower than before.

Azula didn’t bother climbing the platform of the eleventh form.

She didn’t have to.

The statues of the eleventh form were of a Water Tribesman. He was clean shaven, his face and head shaved, but his features were unmistakable. 

Up we went, again.

The next was an Air Nomad. His head wasn’t shaved, and he didn’t wear a master’s arrows, but the slimness of his nose, the thinness of his lips—

After that was another Fire Nation woman. She didn’t look like the woman who had performed for us at the circus. She had an air to her, a nobility. If she looked like anyone, it was…

Ursa.

I looked at Azula, and she didn’t look at me.

Sweat was starting to work its way down my spine, down my nose, aggravating my burns.

Eighth was a Water Tribeswoman, this time without the loops, but with a stone tied around her neck.

Seventh a Fire Nation man, a topknot decorating his head.

Sixth an Earth Kingdom woman, thin and long and elegant.

Fifth an Earth Kingdom woman, short and squat.

Fourth an Air Nomad, shaved bald, her bronze plate shining in the sun.

A the third form, Azula came to a stop.

For the first time since the twelfth form, she walked out onto the walkway before the platform that held the statue, and looked up at the water tribesman in the scroll she had mostly crushed in her hand.

She looked down at the scroll, and loosened her grip.

“Do you think he wrote that scroll?” I asked her.

She looked at me, and then popped open the scroll case, and slid the scroll out into her hand. She slowly rolled her way through it, slipping it from one hand to the other, until she reached the end, and she frowned.

She turned it to face me, and there, signed at the bottom of the scroll, was a combination of two characters I’d never seen paired together before, a combination that was all wrong.

_ Nanuq _ , it read.

Azula rewrapped the scroll, returned it to its case, and handed it to me as she passed me.

The second form was another water tribesman, his features close enough to the features of the third that they could have been brothers.

Finally, we stepped out onto the first platform, and Azula walked into the center of the circle of statues, in exactly the way she hadn’t been able to for any of the others.

Instead of following her, I stayed where I was, because I was finally in the shade, and following Azula had been a mistake.

If only I was too far to see the features of the statues.

The statues before us were of a Water Tribeswoman. Big and tall and as thick as an oak, with a weird short haircut I’d never seen before, but a Water Tribeswoman all the same.

There were more water tribespeople in in these thirteen forms than Fire Nation citizens.

“Well,” Azula said after a long silence, her voice flat, “they’re bad forms, anyways.”

“Of course,” I agreed, because disagreeing right now seemed like a really intensely bad idea.

Azula walked back towards the first of the statues, and looked up at it.

I didn’t know how to interpret her expression.

She looked…

Lost.

When we were young, my parents often sent me to play with Azula even when I told them she would be training. I watched her perform the same form, over and over and over again, as Lo and Li shouted at her and told her  _ Again. _

_ Again. _

_ Again. _

I had only seen Azula take shit like that from four people: Ozai, Ursa, Lo and Li.

But I had been there when Ozai had ordered Azula to cut ties with Ty Lee. When Ursa smacked her for burning a turtleduck alive. Ty Lee, of course, has never gone anywhere, and will never go anywhere, and the next morning after Ursa had slapped Azula, the turtleduck pond had been boiled away.

I had never seen Azula talk back to Lo and Li. Never saw her retaliate.

“Okay,” Azula said, walking towards me, her lost expression dissolved back into an expression I remembered from those evenings with Lo and Li. She took the scroll from my hand, and tucked it under her arm.

“Go back to camp,” she said, because the reason my parents stopped sending me to watch her train was because Azula didn’t like being watched, and set our manor on fire in retaliation. “I’ll be back by sundown.”

With that, she turned, and headed down the stairs.

“Oh,” she said, stopping. “And send Rin up here when you pass her. I need two Onmitsu to make sure that if that door opens, it stays open.”

“Yes, Princess.”

Azula nodded, and then vanished out of sight, down the winding staircase.

I stared blankly at the empty staircase before me for a long moment before I turned away, and started to head down the much straighter staircase back down to the city.

I reached the plain of dirt, and found two black eyes staring out at me from a shadow in the buildings before me.

I made my way towards them, and a black robed figure slowly resolved itself out of the shadows.

“Azula wants Rin,” I told her, pretty sure she was Rin and also wanted me dead. “She needs two Onmitsu in the pyramid.”

The Onmitsu didn’t answer for an uncomfortably long time before bowing her head.

“As the Princess wishes,” she said.

I waited, considered being an asshole, and thought better of it.

“Great,” I said, walking past her and heading back to the camp.

If I had waited another day, I couldn’t help but think to myself, I would have been able to go and see Yaxkin without Azula noticing I was gone.

The trip back to the camp felt a lot longer than the trip out of it had felt.

When I arrived back in camp, I made my way to a small white tent with two guards standing uncomfortably at its entrance, and an extra guard on each other side.

“Lady Mai,” one of the guards at the door said, blocking my way, “we’re under orders not to let you in.”

“That’s nice,” I said to him, moving his hand out of my way, and ducking into the tent.

“Hello Yaxkin,” I said, as the tent fell closed behind me. “Are you having fun with Ty Lee?”

“No,” Yaxkin said mulishly, his right arm suspiciously limp. 

“He shot lightning at me!” Ty Lee said, from where she was curled up on the sand beside Yaxkin, occasionally reaching out to try and poke him. “I thought only Azula could bend lightning!” she said, conveniently forgetting that the Fire Lord and Prince Iroh could also bend lightning, and that forgetting that they could was arguably treason. “Where did you learn to bend lightning?”

“My mom is going to come find me,” Yaxkin said, moving away from Ty Lee, who followed after him, dragging herself sideways across the sand, “and she’s going to kill you.”

“This is all he says! I keep trying to tell him he’s not a prisoner, he just… can’t leave!”

“Oh yes,” I said. “That doesn’t sound like being a prisoner at all.”

“It’s different! If we let him go, he’ll starve, look at him!” Ty Lee poked his uncomfortably thin waist. He tried to wiggle out of it, but didn’t succeed, on account of Ty Lee being Ty Lee. As a general rule, if Ty Lee really wanted to poke you, she’d poke you.

“Has he been eating?” I asked.

“He didn’t want to, but when I threatened to take all of his bending away, he did.”

“Thank you,” I said.

“I hate you,” Yaxkin replied.

“I know,” I said. “Thanks for looking after him, Ty Lee. How’s your side.”

“It’s fine, I’m totally healed,” she lied.

I looked at the faint red stains on her bandage.

“It’s an old bandage,” she continued to lie. “I’m not bleeding.”

“Yaxkin,” I said, “we found the firebending lock your people fled through.”

“Liar,” he hissed.

“There were thirteen sets of statues in a cavern beneath the top of the pyramid,” I said. “And the room beyond the lock was filled with sheets, the walls lined with gold. It had two alcoves, which were stuffed full of scrolls.”

Yaxkin paled.

I had been hoping that we had found an unrelated firebending lock.

But, obviously not.

“That stone wall, that’s what you couldn’t get through to follow them, wasn’t it?”

“It only opens from the inside,” he said, voice small. “When I was eight, Cuallea snuck in and closed it, and mama had to go the long way around to get him.”

Well, that was something. As long Yaxkin’s mother didn’t try to come back through the lock to get him, then we didn’t need to worry about that.

But there was a way around.

Azula would find it, eventually.

“We don’t want to hurt your people,” I lied.

“Liar,” he said. “That other woman, she said she wanted to kill us all!” he helpfully informed Ty Lee. “You’re a liar.”

“What?” Ty Lee said. She sat up, wincing, looking at the boy. “What did she say?”

Yaxkin looked at her with fear in his eyes, the way all benders tended to look at Ty Lee.

Ty Lee turned to me.

“He’s lying, right? Mai, tell me he’s lying.”

I didn’t.

“But—”

“Why do you think, Ty Lee?”

Ty Lee froze, mouth open, and lowered her hands to her side, still covered in a bandage stained red with her blood.

“Take me to her,” Ty Lee said. “Where is she?”

“Ty Lee, you can’t—”

“You can’t stop me, Mai,” Ty Lee said, and her voice was dead serious. “Either tell me where she is, or lead me to her.”

I hesitated.

“She’ll be back tonight, Ty Lee—”

“And what if she opens that whatever door before then, Mai? Take me to her now.”

I hesitated again.

“Fine,” I said.

Ty Lee pushed herself to her feet, stumbling into my arms as she pulled at her wound.

Yaxkin stared up at us, eyes wide. He looked confused, and a little scared.

Ty Lee grabbed my hand, and started to drag me towards the door. I met Yaxkin’s gaze, and held my finger up to my lips.

I saw his eyes widen in surprise as Ty Lee pulled me out of the tent, and back into the sunlight.

It wasn’t even noon yet, although you’d never know it from the heat. Ty Lee stumbled into me, because she couldn’t quite stand. Her hand drifted to the bandage on her side, her face twisted in pain.

I had never seen Ty Lee injured before.

I didn’t think I liked it. It was wrong, to see Ty Lee so… restricted.

The world didn’t feel right, with Ty Lee hobbled like this. Like something was fundamentally wrong with the world.

I wasn’t Azula, so I didn’t offer to carry her, because I couldn’t.

“I’m fine,” Ty Lee lied.

“No,” I said. “You’re not.”

I slipped my arm around Ty Lee’s waist, and she leaned heavily against me.

“Why can’t you just say what you mean?” Ty Lee asked.

I looked down at Ty Lee, and she looked up at me.

“Do you think I’m stupid?” she asked. “Why did you make him say it, rather than telling me yourself?”

“So that when Princess Azula asks you how you found out, you don’t have to lie.”

We were nearing the edge of the camp, and Ty Lee looked up at the rope ladder leading up the cliff.

“If you don’t want Princess Azula to do it, then why don’t you ask her to stop?” she said, uncharacteristically faint-hearted in the face of the rope ladders before us.

“Because Princess Azula has never listened to anyone but you.”

Ty Lee shook her head.

“Liar,” she said. “She doesn’t listen to me like you think she does, and she listens to you more than you think.”

I didn’t know where Ty Lee had gotten that idea, but right now, it didn’t really matter.

“Right now, Azula is doing forms,” I said, when we came to a stop before the rope ladders. “She’s not looking for a way through that door.”

Ty Lee leaned a little heavier against my side. 

“So you’re saying she won’t hurt any of the Sun Warriors, even if we wait until tonight?”

_ She could’ve lied to me, because she knew I’d try to stop her _ , I didn’t say.

_ Yaxkin’s mother could think opening the door was safe _ , I didn’t say.

“Yes,” I said. When I looked down at Ty Lee, her eyelids were fluttering, like she was having trouble keeping her eyes open. 

Ty Lee wasn’t like Azula. There were a lot of ways in which she wasn’t like Azula, most of them were good.

Some of them weren’t, though.

Ty Lee had never trained a day in her life.

Ty Lee was lazy.

Her will was weak.

“Okay,” Ty Lee said.

If Azula had been here, with a hole in her side, I couldn’t help but think, then she would have climbed those ladders even if it killed her.

It would probably be fine. If it wasn’t fine…

Well, then it’d be my fault for not stopping Azula when I had the chance.

Ty Lee may have been lazy.

But I was the one who was weak.

Azula didn’t come back to the camp at sunset. She didn’t come back to the camp an hour after sunset, either, when the sky stopped being that sort of off-blue, and started being pitch black.

“Do you think she’s okay?” Ty Lee asked, squirming in the bedroll I has forced her into when she had collapsed at the door of our tent.

“Of course she’s okay,” I said, flipping the knife I was honing, and holding the edge up to the light. It gleamed in that beautiful way incredibly sharp knives gleam. I resisted the urge to tap my finger against its edge, because I liked having fingers.

I was an awful lot more worried about the Sun Warriors than I was about Azula.

“You said she said she’d be back at sunset,” Ty Lee continued, still squirming. I was surprised being mostly bedridden hadn’t caused her to explode from pent up energy, but here we were.

“Because Azula never lies.”

I laid out the knife on my bedroll, and took the next knife in line. I held it up to the light. It gleamed, but didn’t quite look like it would chop off my finger if I touched it.

I lowered it, and began to run the honing stone over it in an easy, familiar rhythm.

The best blacksmiths in the world were in the colonies. Neither of the colonies my father was sent to, of course. But I dreamed, sometimes, of being reborn as a blacksmith’s daughter. Day in, and day out, nothing to do but hone knives.

I wasn’t sure if it was a nightmare, or not.

Ty Lee whined in the way she did when she knew she was wrong, but wanted you to do something anyways.

“Do you want me to go check on her?” I asked, not stopping my hands.

Ty Lee continued to whine, because she wanted me to do it, but she didn’t want to have said yes, and therefore be responsible for the consequences.

“Fine,” I said, but before I could stand, Azula appeared in the doorway, with her hair as perfect as always, like she hadn’t just spent twelve hours drilling forms.

I don’t know when she learned how to do that, but she had already mastered it by the time I watched her training when we were nine.

“Azula!” Ty Lee shouted, scrambling out of her bedroll. “I was so worried!” She stumbled a bit as she got to her feet, tripping over her own feet, and then dashed towards Azula, only to trip over Azula’s pack, spraying its contents all over the tent, and falling directly into Azula’s arms. “Oops,” she said.

Azula looked down at the contents of her pack sprayed across the entire tent and she didn’t even frown, because Ty Lee. She heaved Ty Lee off the ground, and then carried her over to Ty Lee’s bedroll, because of course she did.

“You’re on bedrest,” Azula said. “Stay in your bedroll.”

Ty Lee, of course, immediately tried to get up, but Azula held her down with a single hand on her chest.

“Princess…” Ty Lee whined, to no avail.

I was glad to see she had already forgotten about the small matter of the genocide Azula was trying to engage in. Ty Lee could always be counted on to not forget the important things.

I set my knife and honing stone down on my own bedroll, and began to gather the contents of Azula’s pack that were closest to me. Three scrolls, a pack of rations, a lantern.

“Two of my Onmitsu were found dead today,” Azula said, and my hands stopped. “That’s why I’m late—we were looking for the bodies.”

I looked up at her, hands full.

“You have Onmitsu?” Ty Lee asked.

“Yes,” Azula said to Ty Lee, and then turned back to me.

“I’m sorry for your loss,” I offered.

She was looking at me like I was hiding something, but considering the thing I was hiding was currently completely forgotten, I was pretty sure she was thinking of something else.

I grabbed Azula’s mostly empty pack, and started to re-pack what I’d found so far back into it.

“You aren’t going to ask me how they were killed?” Azula asked, in her low, dangerous voice.

I stopped, hand around a full water canteen.

“How were they killed, Princess?”

“They had had their throats slit, and about half of their fingers chopped off.”

My stomach heaved at the image her words, and I tried to look down at the sand, but Azula’s gaze didn’t release me.

“It was probably a Sun Warrior, but it’s a funny way for a Sun Warrior to kill, don’t you think?”

“I don’t think it’s funny at all,” Ty Lee offered.

“You wouldn’t happen to know anything about that, would you, Mai?”

“No,” I said, and it wasn’t a lie.

Azula snorted through her nose, nodding. “No,” she said, and her gaze finally released me as she took her hand off Ty Lee’s chest, and dropped it to her red-stained bandage. “You would never do something like that.” Azula squinted at Ty Lee’s bandage with a frown. “Did you get up today?”

“No,” Ty Lee lied.

I put the water canteen in Azula’s pack, and moved over to a long hunting knife, and slid that in on the side of the pack.

A Sun Warrior had killed two Onmitsu. That meant they had also probably snuck into the city.

No big deal.

It just meant that if I waited one more day, Yaxkil’s mother would have rescued him.

All I had had to do was wait.

I dropped my hand to a black knife I’d never seen before, and picked it up.

It was cold. Not just cold in the way all metal was cold, but actually bitter, freezing cold. It felt like ice in my hands, a cool numbness flowing up through my arm, and up into the rest of my body. The low throbbing of the burns on my arms faded away, and then vanished entirely.

It was a well balanced knife. Well made. I held the edge of the blade up to the light, and—

“—Mai!”

I turned to face Azula and Ty Lee.

Or well, where Azula and Ty Lee had been. Now there was just two vaguely human shaped piles of flesh.

One of the piles’ lips were flapping, spraying spit, but I didn’t speak flesh pile, so I wasn’t listening to it.

It was such a well balanced knife. I had a fleeting memory of Azula, screaming on the ground, trying desperately to pull a knife from her throat.

But those Onmitsu, half their fingers missing—throats slit.

Oh—

I smiled, imagined it happening here. From this distance, it’d be easy. I Imagined her begging me for—

“Mai!”

I jumped at the volume of Azula’s voice, and the knife slipped from my fingers, falling to the sand with a soft sort of swooshing sound.

“Are you ignoring me, Mai?”

The arms and face felt like they were on fire. The throbbing of the burns that had vanished while I was holding the knife was back, and so much worse for its absence. The numbness of the scars on my hands now burned. One of my upper molars throbbed.

I fell back onto the sand, groaning in pain.

“No, Princess,” I finally said, and once I had worked through the pain, I remembered imagining chopping off Azula’s fingers, one at a time, and my chest heaved.

The memories came back again, throbbing like the burns in my arms and face were throbbing, and my chest heaved again.

“Princess,” I said, my eyes focusing back on her, where she and Ty Lee were staring at me with a confused sort of horror. “What is that knife?”

Azula frowned at me, but glanced down at the knife anyways.

“Oh, it’s an onmitsu knife. Dad gave it to me for my tenth birthday. It’s a nice—”

“Destroy it.”

“What?”

“Please, Princess. Destroy it. It’s ice, you can melt it, I’m sure.”

Azula frowned at me, but she stood anyways, walking over to me. I was still sitting in the sand, sprawled back, and she took a moment to stand over me like that before crouching—

“No, Princess don’t—”

It was too late. Azula closed her hand around the blade, and looked at me with a quizzical expression.

I waited, but nothing happened. Azula just huffed out a laugh, and shook her head.

“What’s wrong with you today, Mai?” she asked, water vapor curling up and around her chin, streaming up her face. “Do you really care that much about those Onmitsu? Don’t worry—there’s hundreds more where they came from.”

Her fist closed, and then she held her hand out to me, palm open. The black blade was gone, as if it had never been.

Except well, it wasn’t. I still remembered what it had felt like to hold it. What it had felt like to look at Azula and Ty Lee and see nothing more than some uncomfortably animate piles of flesh.

“I just—”

I couldn’t find the words for a lie.

I couldn’t find the words for the truth.

I fell back into the sand, and stared up at the ceiling.

Azula waited for me to continue, but when I didn’t respond, she turned away, and vanished from my vision.

She re appeared a moment later, Ty Lee in her arms. She crouched at my side.

“Comfort her, Ty Lee,” she ordered.

Ty Lee decided the best way to comfort me was to pet my face.

“I know it’s awful,” she said, still petting my face, “but it’ll be okay. Well not for them, I guess, they’re dead,” Ty Lee, comforter extraordinaire. “But you’ll be okay! We’re here for you. Right, Azula?”

“Sure.”

“Thanks, Ty Lee,” I said. “I feel so much better now,” I lied.

Ty Lee giggled triumphantly. Azula looked smug.

I still remembered fantasizing about killing them.

I closed my eyes.

“Oh!” Ty Lee said. “Speaking of things that are awful!”

Oh no.

Not now.

“Yaxkin said that you said you were going to kill all the Sun Warriors. You’re not going to do that, right, Azula?”

Azula froze, and her gaze dropped to me. There was a moment in which their her face was twisted with fury, but then it was gone.

“Of course not,” she said. “I would never do something like that. He must have misheard.”

“Mai said that was what you said, though!”

“Did she.”

I gave up trying to pretend I wasn’t part of the conversation, and slide my gaze over to Azula.

“Didn’t you know?” I said. “I’m a terrible liar.”

Also, mildly suicidal.

Azula face twisted with disgust, and this time, her face stayed twisted.

“They tried to kill you, Ty Lee.”

“But they didn’t! Look, I’m fine!”

Ty Lee waved her hands in a way she apparently thought indicated how okay she was.

“That doesn’t matter,” Azula said. “I’m going to make them pay.”

“Azula, please!”

Azula stood, and walked back to Ty Lee’s bedroll. I pushed myself up into a proper sitting position, so I could see Ty Lee wrap her hands around Azula’s neck to prevent her from getting up and leaving.

“For me?”

Azula stayed like that, crouched over Ty Lee, held there by Ty Lee’s hands around the back of her neck, for a moment, and I thought she would say yes.

Instead, she reached her hands up behind her neck, pried Ty Lee’s hands from her neck, and stood to her full height.

“I am doing this for you,” she said.

“I don’t want this, please!”

“No, Ty Lee,” Azula said, in her Princess voice.

“Princess—”

“Are you going to try and stop me, Ty Lee?” she asked, her voice still in that dangerously low octave. She crouched down beside Ty Lee. “Do you really think you can?”

Ty Lee face scrunched as she tried not to cry.

“No,” she said, voice choked. “But please, listen—”

“Then that’s the end of this conversation.” She stood, and turned away from Ty Lee.

Towards me.

“I wonder how Ty Lee knew that we had Yaxkin in the camp,” she said.

“It’s a mystery,” I agreed.

Azula cross the distance between us, and crouched down before me.

“Actions have consequences, Mai,” she said.

My blood ran cold.

Azula stood.

“Princess, where are you going—”

She stopped at the opening of the tent, but didn’t look back at me.

“If I said I was going to go kill the boy, what would you do?”

I could hear the smile in her voice.

But I didn’t say anything.

She laughed, under her breath.

“That’s what I thought. Pretty, righteous little Mai.” She pushed the tent flap open. “I’m going to go move the boy to the ship. If his mother is capable of taking out two onmitsu without alerting the others and without using her firebending, then the camp isn’t secure enough to hold him.”

She stepped through the flap, and I watched the flap fall back into place, swishing back and forth four times before coming to a stop.

“Mai,” Ty Lee said from where she was half sitting on her bedroll, like she was ready to leap up at any moment. “I tried, I’m sorry.”

“It’s not your fault, Ty Lee,” I said. I paused. “It’s Azula’s.”

What’s a little treason between friends?

I stood, restocked my sheathes, and strode to the door.

“Mai, where are you—”

“I’m going to make sure Azula isn’t going to kill Yaxkin.”

I ducked under the flap, and out into the night.

The night was darker than I was expecting, the night sky moonless above me, leaving the night pitch black outside the weak, flickering light of the torches placed at even intervals around the camp.

Two tents down, three tents over.

“I don’t want to hear it,” I interrupted the guard before he could speak, and ducked into the tent.

Azula looked over at me, and her eyes glittered with an unpleasant combination of surprise, happiness, and malice.

“Well, well, Mai,” she said. “What are you doing here?”

“I thought you might want company,” I lied.

She laughed, and then turned her gaze back to Yaxkin.

“I was just telling Yaxkin here that we need to move him to the ship, and he was just—”

“I won’t go! My mom’s gonna come—”

“Mistakenly believing I was  _ asking _ .”

Yaxkin flinched away from what he saw in Azula’s face.

“Your mother killed two of my people today, Yaxkin,” Azula said, advancing towards him. He backed away, glancing towards me with wild eyes. Looking at me for help I couldn’t offer. “I don’t have the patience of dealing with your petty selfishness.”

Yaxkin reached the side of the tent, and his eyes as he looked at me were pleading.

“Do as she says,” I said to him. “It’ll be okay, I promise.”

He was still staring at me, eyes shimmering like he wanted to believe me when Azula’s arm lashed out at him, tapping three points up his sternum, and he crumpled to the ground.

Azula ducked down, and tossed him over her shoulder like a particularly ungainly bad of potatoes. She walked towards me, while I stared at the dimple in the sand where he had crumpled to the ground.

“Well, if you’re going to make sure I won’t dump into the ocean,” she said as she passed me, “you better hurry up.”

I turned, and followed Azula out of the tent.


	13. Book 1 - Chapter 6

Two soldiers were found dead today.

It had been three days since the first two Onmitsu were found dead. I hadn’t known if they were still dying, because I hadn’t been asking.

But now two soldiers were dead.

It was just after noon. Azula was in the pyramid, probably doing weird ancient firebending forms, like she’d been doing for the last three days.

Three hours ago, Privates Sun and Ming had failed to report for duty. The guards who had replaced them yesterday admitted to having not seen them when they took their stations, but kept quiet, to keep Sun and Ming from trouble.

And so for the last three hours, about half of the camp had been searching the jungle for them in the vain hope that they would be found alive.

Or, really, be found at all. Anyone with half a brain would have just tied their bodies to some rocks tossed them into the ocean.

There was a lot of ocean, and we weren’t searching it.

Thankfully, or maybe not so thankfully, whoever it was who was murdering our people had less than half a brain.

I was guessing about a quarter.

Maybe a third.

I was standing over their bodies because I’m a sucker.

I was standing over their bodies because Wu had asked for my help, inexplicably believing I could be of any use in searching for bodies in the jungle.

I wasn’t terribly happy that I had been the one to find them. I really didn’t want to be the person you went to when you wanted to look for bodies.

But here I was.

I lit a flare, and pointed into straight up into the sky above me.

I hadn’t seen the bodies of the first onmitsu to be killed. I hadn’t asked to see them, because I hadn’t wanted images to go with the description Azula had so kindly offered me.

This time, it didn’t look like I had a choice.

I had never seen Sun and Ming with their masks off. I wasn’t sure I’d ever seen them at all, on account of the masks. But I saw them now.

They were old. Wu’s age, maybe a little older. 

Sun was bald so far back that his top knot was sticking straight back from his head, instead of up. Ming was a little lazy about shaving his head, and black stubble covered most of it.

Both of their throats were slit.

Not cleanly, either. It was ragged, jagged cut, like it’d had taken two or three swipes to finish the deed.

The knife that had killed them had been dull.

I looked up at the blue sky above me.

I hadn’t looked at their hands. They were tied behind them, so I at least had an excuse beyond “I didn’t want to look”.

I stuck the flare into the mud at my feet, and crouched down beside Ming. I grabbed him by the shoulder, heaved him up far enough to see his hands.

I dropped him, and barely restrained myself from puking on top of Ming’s poorly shaved head.

On the plus side: Ming still had all of his fingers.

On the minus side: Most of his fingers were broken.

Fucking.

Fuck.

Agni, I hated this island. I hated these ruins, and I hated these fucking Sun Warriors.

I stood up, and walked away from the bodies.

I was brought up short when a very familiar pair of shoulders appeared from the trees behind me.

Li had, of course, ended up searching the strip of jungle next to mine.

“Lady Mai,” he said, bowing his head. “Are you—” he stopped speaking when his eyes fell on the two bodies behind me.

“No,” he said, like this hadn’t been the only option. “Jun, no.” He held his hand up to his face, and stubbed his fingers against his mask. “Please, no.”

Great. Li knew Sun personally.

He stumbled past me, bumping into me along the way, and I didn’t turn to watch.

Instead, I got to listen. The squelch of his knees hitting the mud, the sucking sound of him picking up Sun’s body.

The sound of him beginning to cry.

I’d never heard Li cry before.

What a day of firsts this was turning out to be.

Wu was the sixth person to come, I think. Something around then, anyways.

“You found them, Lady Mai?” he asked, when he came into earshot.

“Unfortunately.”

“I’m in your debt,” he said, and sounded like he meant it.

“No,” I said. “You’re not.”

Four bodies and counting. if I had gone to Ran that night, then he could have stolen Yaxkin away, and none of this would have had to happen.

If I hadn’t gone to the city that night, then only the first two onmitsu would have had to die.

But, of course, I had fucked up.

Twice.

So here we were.

He came to stand beside me, looking behind me at whatever it was the five men who had come so far were doing with the bodies.

He stayed silent for a moment, but not for a particularly long one.

“You’re not surprised,” he said.

“No,” I agreed.

He was, though. Everyone was.

Because why would anyone tell Wu about the dead Onmitsu?

I didn’t know if he even knew he had had Onmitsu on his ship. Could you hide something like that?

“Is this because of that boy Azula brought back?”

“Yes.”

Wu cursed under his breath. “We shouldn’t even—” he began, before he realized his sentence was treasonous.

I pretended I didn’t hear it.

“Do you know you have Onmitsu on your ship?” I asked him instead.

He paused.

“Yes.”

The  _ How could I not?  _ was implied.

“Two of them died three days ago. Killed by the same person.” I studied the bark of the tree in front of me. It was mossy, a dull green that covered the bark in irregular patches. “Probably Yaxkin’s mother.”

“Yaxkin?” Wu asked.

“The Sun Warrior boy. His name is Yaxkin.” 

“Were they also—”

“Their throats were slit, and half of their fingers were cut off,” I said.

Wu took a deep breath. 

“Agni,” he said, which I thought was a pretty reasonable response, but on this island, I was pretty sure Agni wasn’t on our side. After he took another breath, he asked, “Private Sun and Private Ming—”

“Their fingers were only broken.”

_ Only _ .

He didn’t look very pacified.

“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you,” I said.

“You assumed I already knew.”

I had.

“Agni, fucking—”  _ Fire Nation Princesses _ .

A pause, as Wu worked through his issues.

“What does the Princess think of this?”

“She didn’t seem particularly bothered by the death of the Onmitsu, and I doubt she’ll be particularly bothered by these deaths, either.”

I could say it. He couldn’t.

“I… see.”

He sounded like it pained him not to say anything more.

Thankfully, he dealt with it without requiring me ignore any more treason.

Unfortunately for him, I was not going to return the favor.

“Azula,” I said, voice low, “is currently distracted by some firebending forms in the ruins. I don’t know how long she’ll be distracted, but it probably won’t be much longer. As long as she’d distracted, she’ll leave the boy where he is, and his mother will keep attacking your men.” I glanced at Wu’s face, and he didn’t look like he wanted me to be burned alive, so I continued. “When she’s done, she’ll use that boy to try and draw out the Sun Warriors so she can kill them all.”

He turned his gaze away from me.

“Are saying we should let the boy go?” he asked, his voice barely a whisper.

“No,” I said. “That would be treason.” The spotty moss I was staring at looked soft. I resisted the urge to reach out and touch it. “But Captain, wouldn’t it be great if he just happened to escape?”

“It might be great for you,” he said. “But it would not be so great for whoever is on guard when he escapes.”

“Yes,” I agreed, giving into the urge, and running my fingers up the tree trunk before me. It was soggy and not particularly soft, bearing a striking similarity in texture to a wet rag. “Unless it was Ty Lee and I.”

Wu froze, and then slowly turned his gaze towards me.

“Wouldn’t it be great,” I said to the tree before me, “if Yaxkin just happened to escape when Ty Lee and I were guarding him? His mother would stop torturing and killing your men, and Azula would no longer be able to torture a child to try and slaughter an entire people.”

“And you said letting the boy go would be treason,” Wu said to the bodies of two of his men before him, a little bit of laughter in his voice.

“Have to have your priorities straight, Captain.”

“Yes,” Wu said, turning to me, torso and all. “I suppose you do.”

I turned to him into return, sliding my hands into my sleeves.

“Do I have your support, Captain?”

Wu hesitated, but finally bowed his head.

“Yes, Lady Mai. You have my support.”

“Thank you, Captain.”

“But are you really so sure the Princess will be so… forgiving?”

“It’s nothing we haven’t done before,” I lied.

Wu looked unconvinced by my obvious lie, but he was thankfully interrupted by one of his soldiers that  _ wasn’t _ Li. (Li was still crumpled beside Sun’s body.)

“Captain Wu,” he said. “We would like to move Private Sun and Private Ming back to the camp for the cremation.”

Slowly, Wu turned away from me, the doubt in his face sliding away.

“No,” he said. “It’s too dangerous to move their bodies—with deaths like these, their spirits may be too broken to follow us back to the camp for the cremation, and will be left unable to return to Agni.”

The soldier bowed his head.

“Of course,” he said. “Our mistake.”

“We’ll need to confirm with the Princess,” he said, turning to me. “As the commanding officer, she has right to decide the cremation of fallen soldiers.”

Including, but not limited to, not giving them a proper cremation.

“Lady Mai,” he said. “I know I’ve already asked too much of you today—”

_ —but would you beg Azula to let us cremate our dead? _

“—but would you inform her of the deaths, and ask her if she has any concerns about the cremation?”

“Of course,” I said.

“I’ll send a guard—”

“No,” I said, holding my face straight with active effort. “That won’t be necessary.”

Wu bowed his head.

“As you wish, Lady Mai.”

I looked to my right, where Li was knelt at Sun’s side. He wasn’t wearing his mask anymore, it was discarded in the mud behind him, and he had lifted his tear-stained face to look over at me.

I turned back to Wu.

“I’ll be back as soon as I can.”

He bowed his head again.

As I walked away, I heard him call out to his men.

“Li, Hu, go back to the camp, and find anyone who wishes to be present at the cremation. As soon as we have the Princess’s approval, we want to have the cremation. The longer we wait, the longer they have to suffer.”

The trees closed in around me, and the sound of the soldiers milling about the two dead bodies faded into the creaks and cracks and whispers of the jungle.

I wasn’t attacked on my way to the ruins, but I walked the entire route with my hands in my sleeves, and three knives in each hand. I only returned the knives to their sheathes when I was halfway up the pyramid’s staircase, and above every other building in the city.

I clenched my hands into fists, trying to forget what Ming’s fingers had looked like, and trying not to imagine what my own fingers would look like, if—

I shook my head, and distracted myself by rubbing at the loose skin on my forearms.

It was almost at the sheet stage, but not quite.

I was only bleeding a little bit when I stepped through the massive entryway into the pyramid.

It was just after noon, and the sun was pouring directly down from the massive hole in the ceiling. It didn’t feel like I had walked inside a building at all, just under an arch.

Azula wasn’t among the statues of the First Form, so I looked right, down and down and down and down and—

I turned left.

The statues of the first form were scorched in ways they hadn’t been, when I had left. I was pretty sure that it wasn’t supposed to be possible to scorch firebending form statues, but here we were.

The statues of the second form were similarly scorched, as were the third.

Down and down I went, and by the seventh form, I was getting pretty sure that Azula was on the bottom floor.

So, of course, she was among the statues of the eighth form.

She wasn’t actually performing it, though, so I didn’t notice until she called out to me.

“What are you doing here?”

I jumped at the sound of her voice, and almost fell to my death.

What a great city.

What a great pyramid. What a great idea building this had been.

When I recovered from almost dying, I looked out into the eighth platform, and found Azula was sitting beneath the two statues at the end of the form, legs dangling over the edge of the horribly bottomless pit, a half-finished scroll hanging loosely in her right hand.

She had removed most of her armor, leaving her in nothing more than her undershirt and pants. I looked down, and found the rest of her clothes in a pile at my feet.

“Two soldiers have been killed,” I said. “Probably by the same person who killed the two Onmitsu.”

“Okay,” Azula said, not sounding particularly interested, eyes drifting down to her scroll. “So?”

“Captain Wu thought you should know,” I lied.

Azula frowned, and her gaze fastened on me.

“Right, because you report to Wu.” She tapped the scroll against her chin, and then smiled. “Oh,” she said, unfortunately recalling her privileges as commanding officer, “he sent you here to try and convince me to let him cremate them. Right?”

She laughed her  _ I have power over other people _ laugh.

“That’s right,” I said.

“I had the dead Onmitsu buried,” she said.

I probably made a face, because she laughed.

“They got killed by a Sun Warrior who didn’t even use their firebending!” she said, still laughing. “They’re embarrassments to the Fire Nation—they didn’t deserve a proper cremation.”

I smoothed my face the best I could.

“What would you do if I told you to go back and tell Wu to bury them?”

She was leaning forward now, scroll forgotten. The lotus symbol above us colored the noonday sunlight to an off red color, making her face look flushed, to matching the glittering in her eyes.

“I would go back, and tell Wu to bury them,” I said.

Azula tossed the scroll onto the platform beside her, like it wasn’t a priceless artifact describing a lost firebending form, and pushed herself to her feet.

“You would, wouldn’t you?” She walked towards me, prowled towards me, smiling. “But you know what I think you would do?” She came up to me, got close enough I could feel the furnace of her skin, but not so close she had to raise her chin to meet my eyes. “I think you’d go back, after the burial, dig them up, and cremate them yourself.  _ May your sins be burned away, and may you live forever in Agni’s eternal flame _ .”

She came a little closer, still smiling.

“That’s what you would do, isn’t it Mai?”

It was.

“No,” I lied.

“You’re a terrible liar, Mai.”

She held my gaze for another moment, and then laughed again, this one only a little bit less cruel than before.

“I’m kidding, Mai. Don’t look so serious. Tell Wu whatever you want to tell him about how to deal with his men. You can tell him he can have a cremation, or you can tell him to dump them into the sea,” she smiled, like it was funny, or a joke. “But,” the smile dripped off of her face, “tell him that if he ever sends you to beg me for something ever again, I’ll rip his head from his body, and throw his body in the ocean.”

Azula got a little closer, tilting her chin up to meet my eyes.

“Can you do that for me, Mai?”

I opened my mouth, closed it, opened it again.

“What’s a Sunday without threatening to murder someone and desecrate their corpse?” I asked.

Azula laughed, because to her, it was true.

“I’m glad we’re in agreement,” she said, turning away from me, and then making her way back to her scroll, picking it up, and settling herself back down on the ground.

I turned to leave, but Azula stopped me.

“Oh, and Mai,” she said.

“Yes, Princess?”

“Don’t you want to know where I buried the Onmitsu?”

I stopped.

Azula laughed. “I thought so. It’s on the Eastern end of Sai street. We’ve lost five Onmitsu so far. I’ve just tossed them all in the same hole, so you shouldn’t be able to miss one, but make sure to double check. We wouldn’t want to leave any of those poor, incompetent Onmitsu wandering the earth for all of eternity.”

Then she waited for me, smile expectant.

“Thank you, Princess.”

Azula smile grew.

“Of course, Mai. Anything for you.”

“Goodbye, Princess.”

“Goodbye, Mai.”

Sixth floor, fifth floor, fourth floor.

I’d read about what happens to the dead when they’re not cremated. I had seen it, once.

My Uncle Tojiroh, found dead in his wing only after the smell got so bad you could smell it from the yard.

Third floor, second floor, first floor.

I stepped out into the sunlight. I could see Tojiroh’s face now, because I had been eight, and snuck into his wing to see. We cremated him that night, but it had been too late.

His body had been empty.

I reached the second platform, the first platform, the dirt field.

I wound my way through the streets of the city, ignoring the eyes staring at me from the shadows, and finally came to a stop at the end of the street Azula had named “Sai street,” despite its rather distinctive lack of Sai’s.

I had expected to have to find the grave, and dig it up, but…

I didn’t have to.

Sometimes, I looked at Azula, and I forgot what she was. When it was just me, and Ty Lee, and Azula, I could sometimes forget.

But then—

Then there were times like this.

Sometimes, Azula dumped five people’s bodies in a hole, to punish them for being weak enough to die. 

The wind blew over the open grave, and I gagged.

“Dammit, Azula,” I said, despite myself. “Dammit.”

I held a hand over my nose, and it didn’t help. I walked forward, closer to the hole, and then looked down.

The hole was in the sun, and the contents of hole were unspeakable.

“Agni,” I said, “have mercy.”

I counted the bodies, and made sure it did, indeed, contain five bodies.

I couldn’t count torsoes, so I counted arms.

One, two, three, four, five, six, seven…

I twisted my head.

Eight, nine, ten.

Satisfied it contained all of the death, I staggered away from the hole of death, moved upwind, and collapsed onto the ground to gasp at the air.

I looked up at the sky, and out of the corner of my eyes, I saw two black eyes staring out of the shadows at me.

An Onmitsu. 

I remembered what Azula had called the black knife her father had given her.

_ An onmitsu knife _ .

I drew a knife, and closed my eyes. In, out.

I opened them, and the eyes were gone.

There were dry branches and leaves scattered across the ground, and I began to collect them. Once I had an armsful, I held my breath, walked back to the hole, and dumped them all in.

It took me half a minute to look away from the contents of the hole, and do it again.

And again.

And again.

And again.

When I touched my face, it was wet.

One last load, and the branches spilled out of the hole, and onto the ground around it.

You could barely see the bodies, anymore. It was hard to distinguish their limbs from the limbs of the broken branches.

I pulled the fire starter from my robes, and knelt by the grave. The stench made my eyes burn, so I closed them.

“May your sins be burned away,” I said, “and may you live forever in Agni’s eternal flame.”

I lowered the fire starter into the hole, and set about setting the dry leaves on fire.

They caught, then the twigs caught, and then the branches caught.

I stood, walked to a safe distance, and knelt again. I bowed forward, touched my forehead to the mud, and said—

“ _ Agni, please, accept my plea, and take the dead into your neverending flame. _ ”

With each word, the heat on the top of my head grew stronger, the light from the fire before me grew brighter.

When I finished I straightened, and stared at the roaring white flames raging in the hole before me. Behold, the only firebending anyone on earth could do.

In a traditional cremation, the dead’s passage into Agni’s embrace is watched by their loved ones, the bright white of their flames seared into their retinas, but these were Onmitsu. They didn’t have family, or loved ones, or even comrades.

All they had was me.

So I watched for all of them.

“May your sins be burned away,” I said, “and may you live forever in Agni’s eternal flame.”

“May your sins be burned away,” I repeated, “and may you live forever in Agni’s eternal flame.”

And again, and again, and again, and again.

Until the white flames dissolved into red flames, and then even those red flames disappeared.

I walked forward to the hole, and hesitated.

My uncle hadn’t burned. His body had charred black, but he had burned like nothing more than flesh, his spirit long gone.

I looked down, and there was nothing but left in the hole but wood ash, and smoldering embers.

“Thank you, Agni,” I said, “for your neverending mercy.”

Staring down at the wood ash, I didn’t hear the footsteps until a voice behind me spoke—

“So at least some of you do know how to treat the dead.”

I blinked, my brain slowly trying to work through the thick stench of death that was still in the air and was still clouding my thoughts.

I turned, and found a woman leaning against a tree behind me.

She was a large woman, a head taller than me, with light brown skin and two darker brown tattoos down each of her cheeks that looked uncomfortably like dried blood.

“You were the one who killed them,” I said, because my brain had not yet caught up with my circumstances. “If you don’t like the way we treat our dead, you shouldn’t have killed our people.”

She had a knife in her right hand. A short, ragged little thing, stained brown with blood.

“If you tell me where my son is, then I’ll kill you quickly.”

Her skin was brown, her hair without a topknot, but when she spoke, like she was offering me a favor, she was wearing Azula’s face. Wearing her dead golden gaze.

“Don’t make this—”

“Your son is in our ship,” I said, because I was only legally obligated to listen to Azula’s threats. “He’s fine—or at least he was this morning.”

Her Azula mask broke, and surprise showed through on her face. Her mouth fell open, and her hand tightened on the nub of a knife in her right hand, the muscles in her right arm standing out as she squeezed it.

Had she really killed seven of our people, and none of them had known where Yaxkin was? We weren’t keeping him a secret.

She took a step towards me, and I slipped my hands into my sleeves. Her eyes barely even followed the motion, because apparently the only kinds of knives her people had were the mess she was still kneading in her right hand.

“Your ship?” she said, still walking towards me. “That monstrosity you have in the split bay?”

I slipped my hands a little further into my sleeves, and slipped three knives into each hand.

“Yes,” I said. I primed the launchers on my wrists, and then waited.

“Where is he on the ship?” she asked, still walking. I was close enough to feel the heat pouring off of her skin, now.

When we were children, Azula had liked to spar with me without using her bending.

Heat had poured off of her skin just like heat poured off Yaxkil’s now.

I never beat her.

It was hard to beat someone with fire running in their veins, instead of blood. Somone who could move faster than you, punch harder than you, and take more hits than you.

It required you to be perfect.

(It required you to be Ty Lee.)

“The brig,” I said. “On the third level. But the ship’s too large for you to be able to find him alone.”

“I’ll manage.” She was within reach, now. Or really, I was within her reach.

“You’ll have the entire ship coming down on you,” I said. “You won’t be able to get out alone.”

She smiled.

“I’ll manage,” she said, and her hand lashed out across the distance between us in a blur.

She wasn’t aiming for my neck, which meant she’d probably been lying about killing me quickly.

How delightful.

I slipped under her hand, and stepped into her chest. I hooked a foot under her leg, and when she stepped back she tripped, and I followed her down.

“Trust me,” I said, one knife against her neck, and holding another against the wrist holding the knife. “You won’t be able to get out alone.”

She tried to move her head, and flinched back when the pressure of it opened a red line against her neck, because I actually sharpened my knives.

The smell of fresh blood mixed with the horrid stench of death that was still all around us. It was thick enough I felt like I could feel it. I felt it sticking to me, workings it way into my clothes, and my hair.

And the reason for it was right here, beneath me.

It would be so easy to move my right arm, just a little. Six inches to the left.

Maybe a foot.

It would be  _ so easy _ .

She had tortured and killed seven people. I could still hear Li’s screaming, could only imagine how Sun and Ming had screamed as she had broken their fingers.

Seven people, and for what? 

I could sneak Yaxkin out without her. She wasn’t necessary. 

But, really, maybe I shouldn’t even do that.

What worth was a society that made women like her? Maybe I should just let Azula take them—let Azula wipe them from the earth.

I was ready to do it. Ready to push down just a little bit harder. Really, either hand would do.

But then I remembered why the Onmitsu were dumped in a hole, instead of cremated.

What worth was a society that made a woman like her?

What worth was a society that made a girl like Azula?

“Drop your knife, Yaxkil,” I said, and realized as I was saying it just how stupid saying it would be.

Yaxkil stiffened beneath me.

“Where did you hear that name?”

I glanced down at Yaxkil’s free hand, and back at her.

“Your son told me,” I said. “He said it was traditional to tell someone your name before killing them, and he wanted to make sure I knew your name in advance.”

Yaxkil closed her eyes, face twisted in…

Despair?

“Huitzi,” she said, almost under her breath. She took a deep breath in, like she was trying to hold back tears, and then—

“Agni,” she said. “Forgive me.”

I scrambled off of her about a split second before the air where my face her had been was lit with bright blue fire. Eztli stood, tears streaming down her face, and lit both of her hands with blue flames, knife tumbling, forgotten, to her feet.

“My name is Eztli,” she said. “My son’s name was Huitzilin.” She spread her hands wide on either side of her, tears still streaming down her face. “And I’ll make you pay for killing my son.”

Fuck.

She clapped her hands together, and a lifetime of evading blue fire got me just barely out of the way of the torrent of blue fire that poured forth from her hands . Blue flames raged into the air all around me, Eztli’s bloodshot eyes found me in the heat haze, and I ran.

Blue flames followed me.

I ran with an eye over my shoulder, and an eye in front of me, seeing neither of them particularly well. I stumbled over roots, twigs and my own feet, took glancing fireballs to the shoulder, leg, and back. My clothing was fireproof, but my skin wasn’t—my clothes burned where they lay against my skin.

I ran.

We were too close to the city. With blue flames raging into the sky, the Onmitsu couldn’t be far behind. Azula not too far after them.

I slipped behind a tree, and slid the third knife from the second sheath on my left thigh.

I ducked as it split in two, spraying bark into the back of my neck.

I ran again.

Eztli’s aim wasn’t good, but it didn’t really have to be. I ducked behind trees, tripped over roots, took a glancing fireball to the left arm that made my arm scream.

I had been running for just under five minutes when I stopped, and turned back to face her.

I didn’t see any onmitsu in the trees around us, which was no guarantee, but it was better than nothing.

Eztli came to a stop behind me, tears still streaming down her face, lifted her hand, and I threw the third knife from the second sheath on my left leg through the blue fireball she threw it at me.

She grunted in pain, and then, a moment later and about ten feet from my face, her fireball dissipated into nothing.

The blue flames raging throughout the jungle all around us died with it.

When my vision cleared, Eztli was on her knees, staring down at her hands. Staring down at the long red line in her right arm.

“What did you do to me,” she said.

“I poisoned you,” I said, walking up to her, crouching before her, and then holding a non-poisoned knife to her neck. The tendons in her neck stood out as she tensed. “Now, I want you to listen to me.” I looked over her shoulder, back at the smoldering mess she had made of the jungle in her passing, back to her. “We can both agree I could kill you right now.” 

She didn’t really look like she wanted to agree with that, but I didn’t have time for that right now. 

“But I won’t.” I sheathed my knife. “I didn’t kill your son, and I didn’t lie to you. I don’t want your son on our ship any more than I do.” I checked the jungle behind her again. It was still empty. “Our leader has ignored you until now, but with what you’ve done here—” with the flames you have “—she won’t anymore. She’s going to try and use your son to draw you out. Don’t let her. Whatever happens, I won’t let her hurt him.”

Eztli didn’t look convinced.

“I’ll find a way to get him out—get him to you,” I said. “I won’t let him die. Don’t let Azula draw you out—you weren’t able to beat me, you’ll never be able to beat her. Do you understand?”

Her eyes made it very clear that she did not.

“Fine,” I said. “She’s coming. You need to run.”

She looked behind her, pulled herself to her feet, and did not run.

“Please,” I said. “You can’t bend, please, run.”

She looked down at me.

“If you’re lying to me,” she said. “I’ll kill every last one of you.”

“I’m not—in the meantime, please stop killing us. Now please—”

She turned to run, and I realized, belatedly, that—

“Wait,” I said, reaching out to catch her by the elbow. The jungle was still quiet. The path before us was still clear.

She turned back to me, and looked down at my hand with her lips pressed into a flat line.

“Your blue flames—how did you get them?”

If Azula could get her blue flames back, she wouldn’t care about the boy. She wouldn’t care about the dead soldiers, the dead Onmitsu.

If she could get her blue flames back—

Eztli lips twisted in disgust.

“You want to know how I got my blue flames? How I got the betrayer’s flames?” She leaned towards me, and her skin was starting to heat up again, the poison working its way out of her system. “It was easy. All I had to was kill the person I loved most.”

I blinked.

When I opened my eyes again, she was gone. My hand was still in front of me, where it had been holding her by the elbow, but it was open now.

I must have let her go, but I didn’t remember it.

“What?” I said to the empty air. “What?”

I blinked again.

“—Mai!”

I blinked, and Azula was in front of me—

“Where is she?” she snarled, murder in her eyes. Behind her, the fires that had died with Eztli’s bending were raging once more.

Eztli had turned to my left, so I pointed to the right.

And then Azula was gone, as suddenly as she had come.

_ I know how to get your flames back _ , I didn’t say after her back.

_ All you have to do is kill Ty Lee. _

Agni.

Fuck.

My hands were shaking. 

I tried to take a deep breath, but my breath caught in my throat.

No big deal. It was probably a lie.

(But why would Eztli lie.)

Even if it wasn’t, as long as Azula never found out, she wouldn’t kill Ty Lee.

(Because Azula was known for not getting what she wanted.)

Another failed breath, and then another.

On my fourth try, I got it.

Nothing to do—

Put it out of your mind.

Nothing to do—

I plucked my knife from the tree trunk before me, and I held it up to the light, and its top edge shone with the bright red of fresh blood. The rest of it gleamed with the rainbow gleam of distilled Shirshu venom.

I held it, awkwardly, in front of me.

I wasn’t carrying anything to clean the blood off of the knife.

I had never had to, before.

I looked around me for something to wipe the knife off on, but found nothing but leaves and my own clothes.

Oh well.

It was fine.

I slide the knife back into the sheath on my left thigh.

The forest was empty around me. Silent, mostly, except for the sound of the fires Azula had restarted, crackling away.

I turned to look at the forest to my right, where Azula had vanished, and then back to the path I had run before me.

I walked forward. Back to the city, back to the open grave.

Back to the brown knife that had taken seven of our lives, so far.

It was rough in my hands, the brown patches of dried blood flaking beneath my fingers.

It was heavier than it looked. Thick, bulky, the dull edge horribly wide.

It looked bigger in my hands than it had in hers. Less like a toy.

More like a weapon.

I had no pockets. I had had them removed, so that I could reach the sheathes on my thighs through them.

So I held it. I held the knife that had killed Sun, Ming, and five Onmitsu whose names I hadn’t bothered to ask, through the city, through the jungle path, and then off of it.

Through the trees, towards the milling sound of voices, audible from the path.

I stepped clear of the trees, and all eyes turned to me.

Turned to the angry white burn on my arm, the black scorches on my robe.

I could have wiped my knife off on my robe, I realized belatedly. It was already ruined.

“Lady Mai,” Wu said. “Are you—”

“Princess Azula has no concerns,” I said. “About the cremation. She said it’s fine.”

Wu bowed his head in acknowledgement, but he did it in short, jerky motions, looking at me out of the corner of his eye as he did it.

When no one moved, I continued.

“But you should hurry,” I said, leaving the  _ you never know if she’ll change her mind  _ unsaid.

Wu straightened. “Of course,” he said, and turned to the pyre that they had built for Sun and Ming. It was a real pyre, solidly built to allow for maximum airflow, Sun and Ming laid flat on their backs, their arms folded over their chests, masks over their broken hands. “As the one who found their bodies,” Wu said. “You have the first rites, if there is anything you would like to say, Lady Mai.”

Like was a strong word.

I walked forward, up to the pyre, and looked down at the dead face of Sun, and then at the dead face of Ming. The gaping smiling in their necks had been covered with black strips of fabric, and they almost looked like they were sleeping.

Almost.

But this close, I could smell it.

Smell them.

Urine, diarrhea, rot, stale alcohol.

Death.

I lifted the knife that killed them, and placed it on the pyre between them.

I knelt. I retrieved the firestarter from the depths of my robe, and sparked a dry piece of tinder.

I bowed, forehead to the dirt.

“May you be freed from your mortal torment,” I said, “and may you live forever in Agni’s eternal flame.”

I stood, and my tiny ember was burning white.

I turned away, and walked back to Wu. Belatedly, I realized that none of the soldiers present were wearing their masks. They had them all off, tucked beneath one arm.

Li was standing three men to Wu’s right, his eyes bloodshot, and tear tracks still clear on his face. I didn’t recognize any of the other faces.

I would probably never see them again.

I walked back to Wu.

“The knife,” I said to answer his questioning gaze, “that killed them.”

Wu froze, looking down at me, down at the burn on my arm. I didn’t look back at him, and he eventually gave up.

“Thank you,” he finally said.

“I assure you,” I said. “I didn’t do it for them.”

“It doesn’t matter,” he said. “Thank you.”

Then he walked forward himself, knelt, and held a flaming hand beneath the pyre. The wood crackled as it lit.

He bowed, hands planted, forehead in the mud.

“It was an honor to serve with you,” he said. “May Agni welcome you into Their eternal flame.”

His flames turned white.

He stood.

Walked back to me.

Li walked forward.

Knelt.

Lit the pyre.

Bowed.

“Agni is lucky to have you,” he said. “Rest in peace.”

His flames turned white.

Soldier after soldier went forward, knelt, lit the pyre, bowed, prayed, came back.

Twenty-three soldiers, one after another after another.

Five minutes passed, ten minutes passed, fifteen minutes passed, but the white flames waited. Each white ember smoldered, the wood around it untouched, as twenty-three soldiers walked forward, and made their offering.

The last soldier stood, and white flames stood with them, like they’d been waiting for it.

They surged up the pyre, consuming it in moments, wrapping it all in white flame. The flames roared, raging at the sky.

No one spoke as they roared and roared and roared, and the pyre began to crumble. Down, in on itself.

Down and down until the white flames ran out of wood to burn, and there was nothing but ash.

The knife was gone.

“Well, now that that’s over with.”

I turned back to Azula, who was smiling at me, like she hadn’t stared at me with murder in her eyes half an hour previously.

“ _ May you be freed from your mortal torment? _ You’re so  _ maudlin _ , Mai. And the rest of you—”

“Did you find her?” I interrupted, despite the obvious answer.

Azula narrowed her eyes at me.

“And the rest of you are just as bad,” Azula finished, and then she continued, because I interrupted her. “Those two are embarrassments—they lost to a sun warrior who didn’t even bend. You should thank Mai—I would have tossed them into the sea.”

“Did you find her?” I repeated, moving towards her, in the hopes of directing her away from the cremation.

“ _ No _ ,” she said, holding the gaze of what was probably Wu, over my shoulder. “But don't worry, Mai.” Her gaze snapped back to me, and for a moment, there was murder in her eyes. “ _ I will _ .” 

“Great,” I said. “Just what I always wanted.”

“In the meantime,” she said, turning away from the cremation and heading back to the main jungle path. “Let’s go check on that son of hers. I wonder what we’ll have to do to him to get her to come out of and face me.” She glanced at me sideways, and whatever she saw on my face. “Oh Mai,” she said. “As long as she comes out when we ask her to, he’ll be fine.”

I rubbed my hand over the sheaths on my right thigh.

“Of course,” I said.

We found the path, started walking back up it. 

“Oh, and Mai,” she said, as we passed between the massive stone crags that frame the path as it left the jungle. “After I failed to find that sun warrior, I went back to where you managed to fight her off. And it was funny—I didn’t find much blood. A little bit, but not enough to for a cut tendon, or a serious injury. So I’ve been wondering what would make her run. I can’t imagine her being smart enough to run because she understood you were stronger than her.” The walls of the path on either side of us were high, and narrow enough to feel claustrophobic, walking side by side with another human being. “And you know, when I stepped out of the pyramid, I saw the blue flames in the jungle go out—” she snapped her fingers “—just like that.” The walls kept the heat in, too, and sweat was beginning to bead around my hairline, drip down my back. “The thing I keep thinking of is that she was poisoned by something that took away her bending, but Mai—” she turned to me, and I turned to her “—you don’t have anything like that, do you?”

“No,” I lied.

“You don’t have a knife like that for me, do you?”

“No,” I repeated. “Why would I need something like that?”

“Yes,” Azula said, as we stepped through the crags at the top of the path, and out onto the arena. “That is the question, isn’t it? Why would you have a knife like that?”

We walked across the arena in silence, down the rope ladder.

“If you did have a knife like that, Mai,” Azula continued, as we walked past the guards at the edge of the camp. “I’d be very hurt.” In the distance, I could see the rickety little row boat on the shore that hadn’t been there last night.

“Of course.”

More silence, as we walked through the camp. Azula gestured for me to get into the rowboat, and I hesitated.

“What, Mai, you don’t want to make sure I don’t throw that boy into the ocean?”

I got in the rowboat. Azula pushed it into the sea, and then jumped in, but she didn’t pick up the oars, leaving them in the bottom of the boat and opting instead to stare at me, golden gaze flat, and expressionless. We floated away from the shore, the waves lapping against the prow of the boat behind me slowly turning us until the waves started hitting us broadside, heaving the rowboat back and forth.

I was unpleasant, but for from the most unpleasant experience I had that day. Or even that I was having at that moment.

As we went back and forth, Azula held my gaze.

“When we were kids, you liked to hide things in your pants pockets. Little sweets, packets of fire flakes, do you remember that?”

“In comparison to storing them where?” I asked.

“And you were so proud when you first strapped knives to your thighs, and cut little holes in your pocket. I remember the first time we sparred after you did that, you almost got me.” Back and forth and back and forth. “Tell me, Mai, do you still like to hide things in your pockets?”

“I never did,” I said.

“Just like you don’t have shirshu venom on any of your knives?”

“Yeah.”

Heave and heave and heave and heave.

My head was starting to spin.

“So this isn’t yours, then?” From within the depths of her jacket, Azula produced a very familiar thin vial, filled with a clear liquid. “Someone else must have stuck it in your bag, but I can just—” she made to throw it into the ocean, and reached forward to stop her, despite myself.

Azula smiled.

“Where are they, Mai? Where do you put the knives you have for me?”

Slowly, I dropped my hands to my thighs. Third knife on my left thigh, fifth on my right.

“I was right,” she said. “Now, show them to me.”

I hesitated.

“Mai,” she said. “I’m not asking.”

I had to shift on the wooden seat to get at an angle I could slide my hands through the slits in my pants to slide two knives from their sheathes, and hold them up before me, pinching them between my thumb and index finger to make it clear I couldn’t throw them at her. Their edges gleamed in swirling colors in the light.

“Is that her blood?” Azula asked, a hint of a chuckle in her voice. It wasn’t really a question, so I didn’t answer it. “Now drop them into the ocean.”

I moved my hands to either side of the boat, and dropped the knives into the ocean. They hit the water with a little sploosh, and then rapidly vanished into the depths.

“I’m hurt, Mai,” she said, not sounding very hurt, not looking very hurt.

“I’m sorry, Princess,” I said.

Heave heave heave heave heave heave haev heavehave 

Azula dropped the hand carrying my vial of Shirshu venom into the ocean, and straightened us out to point towards the ocean again, easing the heaving of the rowboat.

I tried not to stare at her hand, which was still draped in the ocean. 

“Do you want me to give this back to you, Mai?” she asked me. “So you can remake those knives you carry around for me? Or can I just drop it, right here? How long would it take you to get some more, I wonder?”

Months, at the least. I had a contact in the last town my father had lived in—two towns, no-one-gives-a-shit-ville. I hadn’t had time to set up another contact—I’d been planning on going back.

Even if I went back, my next vial was one hundred days away.

It was hard to steal enough money for regular shipments, but I had made a point of it.

It would take months to find another source, some more months for them to actually get me any.

“Tell me you want it back, Mai, or I’ll drop it.”

The muscles in her arm twitched, and I swallowed.

“Please,” I said. “Give it back.”

Azula smiled, and pulled her hand from the ocean, and held out her open palm to me.

It was empty.

“Oops,” Azula said. “I must have dropped it.”

I pressed my lips together, and closed my eyes.

Not again.

Not—

Azula laughed, and I opened my eyes. There, in the palm of her hand, was my vial of Shirshu venom.

“You should have seen your face,” she said. “Go on, take it. I won’t throw it away.”

My hands were shaking as I plucked it from her palm, and then slipped it into the uppermost pocket in my vest.

When I looked back to Azula, she still had her hand extended, and her expression was expectant.

This was nothing new.

This was nothing new.

“Thank you, Princess.”

“You’re welcome, Mai.”

We had started spinning again, but this time Azula leaned down to pick up the oars, using them to spin us so that her back was towards the battleship.

“You look so serious, Mai—it was just a joke!” She began to row, long even strokes that sent use skipping over the waves, water spraying out all around us each time we crashed into the ocean. “You’re such terrible liar, I couldn’t help but tease you a bit.”

“As hilarious as always,” I said. 

“Did you really think I would care?” Azula asked, glancing over her shoulder, and navigating us around the prow of the ship. “If you did—” she dipped a row into the water, and turned us in a sudden, stomach churning motion that soaked me, and left her magically dry, “—then I’m a little hurt, Mai, for real this time. When was the last time you cut me with your knives?”

I never had.

But, then again, I had never  _ tried _ .

Scarring the Princess of the Fire Nation had never really seemed like the smart move.

We came to a stop against the side of the ship with a slam, and I had forgotten to brace myself, on account of  _ being on a human powered  _ ship, and therefore almost got to experience the incredibly delightful feeling of slamming, face first, into the metal side of the ship. Unfortunately for everyone involved, I caught myself just in time, and only got to punch the metal siding of the ship, instead.

“Ow,” I said, because I had been intending to catch myself on my palm, and not my knuckles.

“If I was so scared of someone being able to take away my bending,” Azula said, because Timber-Hawks are incapable of empathy, or waiting for the people around them to finish nursing their possibly broken knuckles, “then I wouldn’t keep Ty Lee around, would I?”

Azula had, at the age of nine, defied the orders of the Fire Lord to keep Ty Lee around, so I had been pretty sure Ty Lee belonged to a different sort of category.

“I don’t know,” I said, “maybe Ty Lee’s actually terrible with pressure points, and you’ve spent all this time humoring her.”

Azula snorted.

“Yes,” Azula said, as the cradle came down, and scooped us up. “That sounds like me.”

It did, though. If it was Ty Lee, it did.

_ How did I get my blue flames?  _

_ I killed the person I loved most _ .

We reached the dry dock, and once again, Azula decided that being carried was too low class for her, and jumped off the rowboat, and down to the metal floor a truly unpleasant distant beneath us.

This time, I learned from my previous mistakes, and leaned my head back before trying to squeeze the water out of my horns.

An unfortunate soldier squealed as roughly two tons of water slapped against the deck, but the other five tons seemed to magically stick to the back of my neck, and slide down my robes.

This time, though, I only had a single wet patch, rather than two.

Yay.

Lucky me.

The rowboat came to a stop, and I stepped out. Azula was waiting for me, tapping her foot impatiently.

“I could have gone to find that stupid Sun Warrior boy in the time you’ve made me wait, and thrown him overboard,” she said.

“Wow,” I said. “All I was able to do was wring out my hair.”

Azula looked up at my hair, and frowned at it, like wet hair as some sort of otherworldly, mysterious phenomenon. Azula’s hair was, of course, not just perfectly dry, but hatefully perfect, not a single strand out of place. As always.

My face itched as literally a single hair fell from my horns and down across my face.

“I hear girls shave their heads in the colonies,” Azula said, as we walked towards the boy we were going to threaten, and who Azula was probably planning to torture.

“Only the peasants,” I said, not at all bitterly.

“Maybe I should have your father’s titles stripped—then you could shave your head, and no one would mind.”

“Or you could shave your head,” I offered. “Then everyone would do it, just to copy you.”

Azula laughed.

“Dad would kill me,” she said. “Literally kill me.”

She laughed some more, because filicide was such a common practice it was a joke among the steppe prairie lizards.

I never learned what punishment she had received for not cutting ties with Ty Lee.

But I had seen the assassins sent to kill Ty Lee.

It was the first time I ever saw Azula kill someone. It wasn't the last.

“Here we are,” Azula said, coming to a stop before the door to the brig. She dropped her hands to the massive wheel holding the door closed, and spun it open in a single motion.

Slowly, the door creaked open, to reveal a dark room, lit only by a small porthole in the wall, too small for even Huitzilin to fit through. It was furnished only by two unfurnished metal bed, and a small toilet in the corner.

Huitzilin looked up at us from where he sat, knees to his chest, on the left bed.

He looked very, very small, on a bed built to fit a grown man.

He’d only been here for three days, every day he looked paler, thinner.

More like he had when I had found him in the basement in the city.

“I’ve always wondered,” Azula said, stepping into the room like she owned, because she did, “what would happen, if I locked a firebender in a room like this for weeks. Months.  _ Years _ .” I followed Azula through the door. “Tell me, Yaxkin, how does it feel, to be locked away from the sun?”

Azula had apparently tired of pretending to be a human being, and returned to her natural state. This was good, because I had been worrying she’d strain herself.

I came up to stand beside her, and slid my hands into my sleeves.

Huitzilin looked to me for support, and I looked away.

Keep him alive, keep him in one piece.

He doesn’t have to be happy.

Just keep him alive.

“So Mai here had a run in with your mother today,” Azula said. “Mai won, of course, because your mother is stupid and weak, but even though your mother never firebent when killing like seven other of my people, when she fought Mai your mother bent fire. Isn’t that funny?” Azula asked. “I wonder why she did that.” She stepped forward, up to the bed Huitzilin was huddled on. “You don’t happen to know why she would do that, do you,  _ Yaxkin _ ?”

At the sound of the name that was not his, Huitzilin flinched. He looked to me, my scorched clothes, the ugly white burn on my left arm, down at his legs.

“If mom fought her, she des—”

“What was that?” Azula interrupted him. “I couldn’t hear you—” she reached out, and grabbed him by the arm, hauled him up to her eye level. “Say that again for me? If your mother fought Mai, Mai  _ what _ ?”

I hesitated, and Huitzilin looked down.

“Nothing,” he said.

Azula dropped him back onto the bed with a painful sounding crack.

“That’s what I thought,” she said.

Huitzilin pushed himself back from Azula, against the wall, cradling his right knee, and I took a step forward, my knee against the cold metal.

Azula slid a glance over to me with a dismissive sort of sneer before she turned back to Huitzilin.

“You see,  _ Yaxkin _ ,” Azula said, and Huitzilin flinched again, “I’ve spent quite a bit of time over the last three days reading the scrolls in behind that lock you so kindly told us about. And in one of the scrolls, I read the most  _ interesting  _ story about a little boy named Yaxkin, and his mother, Yaxkil. What a coincidence, don’t you think, _ Yaxkin _ , that you and your mother share the names with the characters in that story?”

Huitzilin didn’t move from where he was crouched against the wall, didn’t look at us.

“I wonder if it means you’ll also share their fate.”

Huitzilin stiffened, and his eyes moved back to Azula. His eyes shone with tears. 

“Please,” he said, voice wobbling. “Don’t kill my mom.”

“What happened to  _ My mom’s going to kill you _ ,” Azula said, enjoying this, because wasp bees enjoyed the pain their stings inflicted on their victims, even as it killed them. “I wonder what kind of face your mom will make when I throw her your  _ rotting corpse _ .”

A chill ran down my spine, and tears started to spill down Huitzilin’s cheeks.

“Please,” he said. “Please—”

“Mai, I guess you’re not familiar with the story,” Azula said, interrupting his begging. “Once upon a time, in a land far far away, there was stupid idiot boy named Yaxkin, and his stupid idiot moher Yaxkil. One day, Yaxkin was killed by pirates. The pirates went to his people, and asked for all of his village’s treasure in exchange for his return. The village refused, but that night, because she was a stupid idiot, Yaxkil stole the village’s treasure and went to the pirates to beg for her son back. They took her treasure, and when she asked for her son, they threw her his rotting body. She wept, realizing she had been tricked, but it was too late. When she attacked the pirates in revenge, they killed her too, and left her body beside her son’s. The next morning, when her village found out what she had done, they found her body, and dumped them both into the sea for their crimes.” At my face, she added. “And then everyone else lived happily ever after.”

Oh, good.

That made it all better.

Huitzilin was still crying.

“It’s a nice story,” Azula said. “Reminds me of the stories my dad used to tell me when I was a child. Did your mom tell you those stories, too,  _ Yaxkin _ ? So that you’d know what was waiting—”

“My name is Huitzilin,” Huitzilin said. “My mom’s name is Eztli, please—”

“Then tell me, Huitzilin, why did you lie to us? What did you think would happen?”

“I’m sorry—”

“Did you want to scare your mother away, convince her you were dead, that she wouldn’t come for you—”

“Please—”

“it’s not going to work, I’m going to kill her in front—”

“Princess.”

Azula turned to me, her golden eyes blazing, and it was only then that I realized it was I that had interrupted her.

And it was my hand on her chest, pushing her away from Huitzilin.

“Please, stop.”

The fury blazing in her eyes turned to disgust.

“You’re pathetic, Mai,” she spat, like we weren’t gossipping about shaving our heads five minutes ago.

“We—” I tried to think of a viable reason for us to not torment a small child beyond  _ it was wrong _ , and failed to come up with anything. I had spent too long away from Azula, forgotten how to come up with Azula excuses. “We need him in one piece to draw his mother out,” I said, even though we didn’t need him psychologically stable.

Azula reeled in the disgust in her face. 

“Fine,” she said.

I didn’t sigh with relief, because—

“But Mai, I’m worried about his bending. He could throw lightning at my back while I’m attacking his mother. So, Mai, if you would be so kind as to take it away, for me?”

Right.

Of course.

I turned to Huitzilin, who was still crying, of course, not listening to us.

I took out the vial of distilled shirshu venom from my vest, pulled out a knife from a sheath on my right thigh, and dribbled a small line across one edge of the blade, and then the other.

I held it one way, and the venom dripped across one side of the blade, and then the other, to drip it over the other, until the entire blade shone with a rainbow sheen.

I turned to Azula, and she was smiling her  _ I’m making you do something you hate  _ smile.

I leaned forward, over the bed, and Huitizilin finally noticed me.

Noticed the knife in my hand.

“No,” he said. “No, please—”

I pinned him to the wall with one hand, took a weak fireball to the chest, and pricked his right arm with my poisoned knife.

I released him, stood back up, sliding the knife back into the sheath in my thigh.

Realization was slowly dawning on Huitzilin’s face. He punched at me, and nothing happened.

“How long does it normally last?”

“Twenty to thirty minutes, unless the bender is particularly strong,” I said.

Benders didn’t react well to losing their bending. People liked to say that bending was a part of them, in some fundamental way. 

It was why firebenders locked away from the sun, waterbenders locked away from water, and earthbenders locked away from the earth did so poorly.

I had never really believed it (get over yourselves—welcome to what it’s like for the rest of us), until I had first poisoned someone with Shirshu venom.

“What did you do to me?” Huitzilin asked me.

“It’ll all be okay,” I lied.

“What did you do to me, why can’t I bend!”

“I’m sorry.”

He rushed towards me, because some benders do that, because they don’t understand just how much of their physical strength comes from their bending.

Azula’s hand flashed out towards him before he reached me, and the light went out of his eyes, and he crumpled into my arms.

“Oh, right,” Azula said. “I know renpou. I guess you didn’t have to do that after all.” I looked at her over the body of the child I had just poisoned. She smiled. “Oops.”

She took him from my arms, and slung him over her shoulders.

“Come on now, Mai,” she said at the doorway. “We have a date with a homicidal Sun Warrior.”

I followed her out of the room, and then closed the door behind us. We made our way back through the ship, back onto the tiny rinky dinky rowboat, where Azula dropped Huitzilin between us like a sack of potatoes.

His body was twisted over the oars still on the floor of the boat, one of his arms flopped over the edge of the boat.

I pulled the oars from beneath him, and handed them to Azula, and pulled his hand back over the edge of the boat.

_ Trust me _ , I had said.

_ I’ll keep him safe,  _ I had said.

When we arrived at the shore, and Azula hauled the rowboat onto the beach, I hauled him over my shoulders.

He was heavier than he looked, and weighed an awful lot more than a sack of potatoes.

“Are you sure you can carry him?” Azula asked, looking at me dubiously.

“I’ve been thinking I should work out more,” I said, instead of  _ No _ .

“Yeah, you’ve been looking fat,” Azula said, because in peacock bear society, an opportunity for an insult could never be passed up.

At the edge of the camp, Wu was waiting for us.

“What are you planning to do with the child, Princess?” he asked.

“Whatever I want,” Azula said. “Are you going to try and stop me, Wu?”

“No, Princess,” he said. When Azula turned away he spoke again. “I heard that Mai was attacked by the woman who killed my men this morning,” he said to her back.

“I wonder where you heard that,” Azula said to the empty air before her, not turning back. “Becuase I was pretty sure that no one who knew about it would have told you.”

“If you’re going to capture her, I’d like to offer my assistance—she’s killed my men as—”

“No,” Azula said, turning to glance back at him, her golden eyes cold. “If anyone follows us, I’ll set them on fire.”

She turned back forward, and Wu turned back to me.

“Come now, Mai,” Azula said, striding forward again. “We don’t have all day.”

“Get Ty Lee,” I said, under my breath as I passed Wu. “I’m not sure I can stop her alone.”

I didn’t see his face, didn’t look back as we strode through the camp. We passed our tent, dark and silent, and I spoke.

“Shouldn’t we get Ty Lee?”

“Sure,” Azula said, not stopping. “Give the boy to me, and go get her. I’ll wait.”

We passed our tent.

“On the other hand, maybe we should just let her rest.”

“Yeah,” Azula said, reaching the rope ladder, and hauling herself up it. “That’s probably for the best.”

I followed her, and got to enjoy the very pleasant experience of crawling up a rope ladder with only one free hand, and fifty extra pounds of weight. I only skinned my knuckles through my gloves once, so I decided to count that as a win.

I heaved myself up onto the arena, and Azula was waiting for me, hands outstretched.

I took them, electing to think she had extended them to help me to my feet.

“Give me the boy, Mai,” she said.

“I just carried him all this way, I think I’ve gotten a little—”

“Give me the boy, Mai,” she repeated.

I opened my mouth with another excuse, and then closed it again.

I pulled the boy from my shoulders, and down into my arms, and then held my arms out to Azula. My arms strained, because I wasn’t a firebender or named Ty Lee, and Azula stepped forward, and scooped him from my arms, like he weighed nothing.

She turned, and walked to the center of the arena. She knelt, and lay the boy at the center of the arena, on the dirt.

“What do you think, Mai?” she said, stepping away from Huitzilin, turning her head up to the sky, almost directly above her. “Does this look like an appropriate place to have an Agni Kai with a Sun Warrior to you, Mai?”

“Is that what you’re going to do here, Princess?”

She laughed at the sky, and looked back at me over her shoulder.

“Of course, Mai. What else would we be here for?”

She smiled like she had smiled when she had challenged Kon Shou to an Agni Kai.

I didn’t say anything, and Azula’s gaze drifted away from me, over the crags surrounding the arena, to the path leading down to the city.

“I know you’re out there, somewhere,” Azula said, stepping back from Huitzilin. “Watching us.”

The mountains were silent. 

I slid my hands into my pockets while Azula was looking away, and drew my poisoned blade from its sheath, and then slipped my hands into my sleeves.

Azula turned, looked back at me.

“Mai, why don’t you go over there—” she pointed at the eastern edge of the arena, halfway between the rope ladder and the path to the city, “— _ where I can see you _ .”

She smiled. 

I crossed the arena, dirt crunching under my feet, and slid my poisoned blade into a sheath on my right bicep. I turned back to her, and spread my hands. “Are you happy?”

“Ecstatic,” she said, her eyes on my right bicep, where I had slipped my poisoned blade. Then her eyes ran over the crags once more.

“Come on, Etzli,” she said, her voice sing-song. “I’m asking nicely. Do you want me to  _ stop _ ?”

She had worked her way away from Huitzilin, gone most of the way back to the rope ladders back to the camp.

She stopped, and waited, hands behind her back.

Seconds passed, ten seconds, twenty, forty, sixty—

“Okay,” she said, and she spread her hands on either side of her. “If you insist.”

She clenched her hands into fists, and a fire blade bloomed from the second and third knuckles of each fist.

She began to walk back forward.

I slid my hands back into my sleeves, and Azula’s eyes followed the motion.

“Now, now, Mai,” she said. “Don’t worry—he won’t feel a thing.”

One more step, and then the air grew heavy with a very familiar weight, and Azula slammed herself into the ground as the air split above her a flash of lightning.

_ No no no _ .

“There you are,” Azula said standing and turning towards to where Eztli stood on one of the crags on the western side of the arena. “Don’t worry,” she said, in that voice she had used when she first spoke to Huitzilin, walking forward again. “I just want to talk.”

Eztli didn’t look like she wanted to talk.

She looked at Azula, she looked at me.

(She could still run.)

She  _ hesitated _ .

“For example,” Azula continued, “where are the Sun Warriors hiding?”

Eztli’s face opened up in surprise, and Azula took the final step to bring her to Huitzilin’s side.

She smiled. She had her back to the rope ladder that led back to the camp, her front to the both of us.

“I’m kidding,” she said, raising a foot. A blade of red fire grew from her heel, and she pointed it at Huitzilin’s belly button. “I don’t actually care.”

Eztli froze.

“Do you want to know what I really want?” In pieces, Azula smiling mask fell away. First from her eyes, then her forehead, then one cheek, then the other, until Azula’s face was once again that mask of barely controlled rage it had been when she had found me in the forest, like it had spent the last hour there, waiting, rotting. “I want to make you  _ pay _ . You couldn’t be satisfied with killing my Onmitsu, killing my men—you tried to take Mai away from me, and for that, I am going to make see you  _ scream _ . I am going to make you  _ wail _ , and  _ weep _ , and then I am going to see you  _ break _ .”

My blood froze in my veins.

“Move, and Huitzilin dies,” Azula said when Eztli began to move, and she froze. Eztli opened her mouth, and Azula continued, “Speak, and Huitzilin dies.”

“Princess—”

“That goes for you, too, Mai,” she said, her heel dropping an inch, and the horrible smell of burned flesh filled the air. My heart twisted painfully in my chest. My fingertips grew cold, and slipped over the handles of my knives.

When neither of us moved, she raised her foot again.

Huitzilin didn’t move, still limp and unconcious on the ground, because pain didn’t wake you up when you had been knocked unconscious with renpou.

“I’m going to tell you what’s going to happen,” Azula said. “I’m going to wait until Huitzilin wakes up, and then I’m going to set his intestines on fire. Then I’m going to let you come and hold him as he dies in agonizing pain. Once he’s dead, I’m going to steal your bending and lock you in my brig with your son’s corpse, where you will never see the sun again. I’m going to leave you there, while your son decays before your eyes, until you stop begging for me to kill you. And then I’m going to seal the door closed, and leave you to die there.”

My stomach heaved, and I held my hand up to my face.

Azula’s eyes followed the motion, and she smiled a horribly, nasty smile I had never seen her smile before.

“I want him to see you, before I kill him. I want him to think you’ve come to save him.”

Eztli’s entire body shook, her golden gaze aflame with fury, but she didn’t move.

“Don’t worry, Eztli. It won’t be much longer. Only five more minutes, until you can see your son die.”

My heart pounded in my chest, blood rushing in my ears, and I finally got my shaking hands to find purchase on one of my knives. I didn’t know if it was my poisoned knife, and couldn’t check.

Azula’s eyes slid to me, and then back to Eztli.

Seconds ticked past, and none of us moved.

I could see nothing but the red flame coming from Azula’s heel, half an inch above Huitzilin’s chest. It wasn’t far enough, and I could see his skin around the black burn she had already carved into his chest began to grow red under the—

Huitzilin stirred.

“Wha—” he said, eyes blinking open.

“Look, Huitzilin, your mom’s here to save you.”

Huitzilin’s eyes roved around him, and then stuck on his mother, on the crag above the arena. He smiled.

“Mom.”

I looked up to Azula’s face, and found her looking at Eztli’s horrified, furious face, all of her attention focused on her. She wasn’t looking at me—

If I threw my knife now, I could hit her.

I could stop her.

I hesitated.

Eztli surged off of the cliff, both of her hands lit with blue fire, and blue flames at her heels powering her down, and forward.

She could never make it.

(I could have.)

Azula’s bared her teeth in an awful smile, drove her foot down, and—

Was suddenly gone, Wu standing in her place, right hand through where her chest had been. I stared at him, and my tunnel vision faded, and I saw Azula tumble across the dirt into a tangle of limbs against the crags at the edge of the arena with a crack.

Eztli crashed into the dirt floor, and Wu scooped Huitzilin up in his arms, and tossed him at Eztli, her flames fading back to red before vanishing entirely.

“Run,” he said, and she ran.

“No,” Azula said, and a flash of blindingly white lightning blazed across the distance between her and where Eztli stood upon the crag with her son in her arms. I watched in horror as the lightning seemed to fall upon Eztli in slow motion, Eztli not even bothering to try and dodge.

She just extended her hand towards the lightning—

Caught it on the ends of her fingers—

And tossed it back at Azula.

Azula barely managed to dodge it, taking the lightning to the shoulder, and throwing her back into the wall she had pulled herself from with another crack. She fell from the wall, on her knees on the dirt. And when I looked back to the opposite wall, Eztli was gone.

Azula screamed red fire as she rose, fury like I had never seen painted on her face.

Her furious golden gaze roved wildly about the arena, stopping briefly on me, my hand still limp at my side, my blade dangling from loose fingers, and then snapped to Wu.

“You,” she hissed, red flames licking at her lips. “I’m going to make you pay.”

She strode across the distance between them, passing within arms reach of me, but I didn’t move. I didn’t reach out, didn’t try and stop her. Wu stood facing her, chin held high, shoulders back, back held straight.

There was fear in his eyes, the corners of his mouth, but he didn’t run.

“Tell me, Wu,” she said as she closed the distance. “Was it worth it?”

When Wu spoke, his voice was calm, his tone clear.

“Yes,” he said.

Once again, I knew what would happen before it did.

I stepped forward, raised my hand—

And hesitated.

Azula closed the last of the distance between her and Wu, and drove her fist into his gut. Wu collapsed with an silent scream, and when he fell away from Azula’s fist, six inches of red fire raged from Azula’s closed knuckles.

My blade slipped from my hand, and fell to the ground with a muffled crunch.

Wu hit the ground with my knife and gagged in an effort not to scream, his hands over abdomen, head in the dirt, but Azula didn’t look at him. She looked at me, instead.

“Don’t give me that look,  _ Mai _ ,” she said, saying my name like it was a curse. “If you had just kept your mouth  _ shut _ , this wouldn’t have had to happen.”

I didn’t say anything, I couldn’t say anything, as Azula leapt into the air, red fire on her heels, over the crags that Eztli had vanished behind, and vanished from sight.

I watched her go, and then turned to Wu’s writhing, groaning form.

“No,” I said. “No no no please—”

I stumbled, fell, crawled in the dirt over to his side. I reached out to touch him, turn him on his back, so I could—

Wu lost the battle with his pain, and he screamed. His eyes opened and his pupils roved over me, golden pupils wild. He reached towards me with a super heated hand, but before flames could leap from his fingers, some measure of sanity returned to his eyes, and he let his hand fall short, onto the dirt.

He bit back his screams with a pained groan, and closed his eyes tightly, teeth bared.

His abdomen had nothing but a small, black hole, almost invisible against the black of his uniform. It looked like nothing, but it wasn’t nothing.

“No no no,” I said, covering it with my hands like that would make it go away.

I tried to think, over the sounds of Wu’s screams that still echoed in my brain.

Help.

I had to get help.

(Nothing but a waterbender’s healing could heal a fire blade to the gut.)

Someone in the camp could help.

I stood, and Wu’s hand caught my wrist.

“Stop,” he said, and it sounded like a whisper and a scream. “Don’t involve my men—” he said, in between breaths.

His golden eyes were beseeching—

(Anyone who helps a traitor is of equal guilt.)

I stopped, and knelt beside his side once more.

“I’m sorry,” I said.

But Wu didn’t respond. He lost his battle with his own pain, and he screamed.

His hands scrabbled at his uniforms, scratched at the dirt—

He screamed, he screamed, and then he screamed some more.

It took him ten minutes to die.

I knew he was dead, because he stopped screaming.

I dug my hands into the stiff frabric of his jacket, and pulled him up towards me, and his head lolled limply back.

I screamed. I dropped my head into his chest and I screamed and I screamed and I screamed, like I was trying to drown out the screams Wu had screamed as he died.

It didn’t work—no matter how loud I screamed, I could still hear him, echoing in my skull.

“—Mai! Mai, pelase, Mai!”

I felt a hand on my shoulder, and the courage I hadn’t had to save Wu, hadn’t had to save Huitzilin, came to me, boiling up out of me, and I reached up, triggering the launchers tied to my wrist, and all of my arrows into—

The air above Ty Lee’s shoulder.

She looked pale and unsteady, but her hands were calm and sure on my wrist, directing my arrows over her shoulder, rather than into her face.

“Mai,” she said, looking down at the corpse I was still holding on to with my remaining hand, like it would bring him back. “Mai, I’m so sorry.”

She knelt beside me, and wrapped her arms around me.

“He came for me, but I—” she shook her head, “—I could barely stand, so he left without me.”

Wu’s body made a muffled thump as I dropped him into the dirt, and wrapped my hands around Ty Lee instead.

Ty Lee grunted in pain, but she didn’t push me away. She wrapped her arms more tightly around me, and crushed my face into her chest instead.

“Ty Lee,” I said into her pink chest. “Agni, Ty Lee, why—”

I tried to speak, but I couldn’t. Tried to turn my feelings into words, but they didn’t come. Screams bubbled in my throat, and I just barely swallow them back.

Ty Lee was kind (Ty Lee was ignorant), so she didn’t point out the obvious.

That I knew exactly why.

And there was no one to blame but—

“It’s not your fault,” Ty Lee said into my hair. “Mai, don’t blame yourself. This isn’t your fault.”

I curled my hands into fists on her back.

“Ty Lee, you don’t—”

“I don’t have to understand, Mai. But unless you’ve learned to firebend while I wasn’t looking—you didn’t do this. Azula did.”

Even pale and unsteady, Ty Lee was still strong enough that her grip on my arms hurt as she pushed me away, just far enough to shove her face between me and her chest, and meet my eyes with hers.

“This is Azula’s fault, Mai,” she said. She was crying, even though you couldn’t have told it from her voice. “I know it’s hard to understand,” she continued. “And I know Azula tried to make you think you did it, but this isn’t your fault.”

I remembered, briefly, Ty Lee, bent over the burned blackened bodies of the assassins sent to kill her. 

_ What are you crying for, Ty Lee—I did this for you _ .

“Tell me you understand, Mai.”

“I understand,” I lied, barely hearing my voice over the echoes of Wu’s screams.

“Liar,” she said with a wet, broken smile. She rested her forehead against mine, and closed her eyes. 

I turned my face away from hers, and she let my head fall to her shoulder. Let me hide my tears.

“It’ll get better,” Ty Lee said, hands winding their way back around my back. “I promise,” she said. “It’ll get better.”

_ What if I don’t want it to? _

_ What if I just want to wallow in it forever, because— _

“Even if you don’t forgive yourself, you’ll eventually just forget.”

Behold, literally-has-never-thought-of-another-person-in-her-life, Ty Lee.

“I promise.” She rubbed my back like I was a particularly pitiful, particularly wet possum-cat. “And remember, I’m here for you.”

_ But _ , a distant and very quiet part of my brain couldn’t help but ask—

_ Who was there for you? _

I cried.

I cried until I couldn’t cry anymore, then cried some more.

I pushed Ty Lee away. She let me go, slowly unwinding her arms from my back until her hands were resting on my waist.

“We have to cremate him,” I said. “If Azula comes back, she won’t let us, we have to cremate him before she gets back.”

Before today, I had had been to three cremations, and had participated in none.

This would be my third today.

I stood, and Ty Lee watched me go.

“Mai,” she said. “You don’t have to, I can—”

“No,” I said, turning to Wu’s body, and then barely holding back a cry at the sight of the long lines of pain that the last ten minutes of his life had carved into his face. If I hadn’t known who he was, I wouldn’t have recognized him. “Oh, Agni,” I said.

“Mai—”

“No,” I repeated, still looking at Wu’s face. “This is—”  _ my fault _ , I stopped myself, midsentence, but Ty Lee wasn’t quite stupid enough to miss it.

“It’s not your fault, Mai.”

She petted my leg, because it was the closest part of me.

I turned back to her, and then stepped around her, towards the cliff leading back to the camp.

But I stopped, five steps from the edge.

I remembered Wu’s last words.

(Wu’s last words.)

“He asked me not to involve his men.” (All those who cohort with traitors are traitors themselves.)

“What?”

I stared at the edge of the cliff, at the camp I could see beyond it. I could only see half of the camp from here, figures in red and black milling about, like nothing was amiss.

Like they hadn’t heard their commanding officer die, screaming in agony.

“Wu’s last words,” I said to the camp. “He asked me not to involve his men.”

There was a crunch of dirt as Ty Lee heaved herself to her feet, and then a heavy weight on my as she leaned against me.

“It’s okay,” she said.

It wasn’t okay.

I turned away from the cliff, walked back to Wu’s body.

Ty Lee followed after me.

“What are you doing?”

I knelt beside Wu’s body. “Performing last rites.”

Slowly, painfully, Ty Lee lowered herself to her knees beside me.

“Because we can’t involve his soldiers?”

“Because we’re the only ones who can get away with treason.”

Ty Lee was silent for a moment, and then finally nodded.

Her hand found its way back to my arm, and she used her leverage on it to heave herself closer to me.

“What does that mean?” she asked, leaning against me. “In the packing district, we…” her voice drifted off, “it’s not important what we did. But we’re not doing that, are we?”

I reached out, and straightened Wu’s legs, then folded his arms across his chest, gritting my teeth at the bloody mess his fingers had been reduced to. I turned to his head, and straightened it. I closed his eyes, and tried to smooth out his agonized expression. (I didn’t succeed.)

I swallowed back another gag, and took a deep breath of that sweet smell of charred flesh that had wormed its way out of his abdomen and into the air all around us.

The world swam.

I clenched my eyes closed until stopped, and then opened them again.

“We’re going to burn him,” I said.

“Oh,” Ty Lee said. “That’s not so bad.”

I turned to her, and she looked at the ground, then turned back to Wu.

“ _ May the Autumn Lord blow away your sins _ ,” she said, under her breath, “ _ and may your name always be whispered on the winds _ .”

There was weight in her words, and a familiarity. Wind began to swirl around us, singing in incomprehensible syllables that almost sounded like—

_ child child child return to me child _

“Ty Lee,” I said. “What did you just say?”

Ty Lee turned to me quizzically.

“The prayer for the dead. I’ve said it a lot, so I’m sure I said it right. Aren’t you going to say it, too?”

The prayer for the dead had a special power in the hands of a firebender. They didn’t have to beg and scrape for Agni’s attention, for Agni’s mercy.

You could hear Agni’s power in their words.

I could hear something’s power behind Ty Lee’s words, but it wasn’t Agni.

I didn’t have—

I didn’t have the energy to deal with this.

_ yes yes give him to me child i will take him yes _

A shiver ran down my spine.

I tried not to think about burning the corpse of a man who had been burned alive.

“May Agni burn away your sins,” I said looking at Wu, “and may you live forever in Agni’s eternal flame.”

_ no child no do not trust the betrayer no _

I could see Ty Lee squinting at me.

“I guess that makes more sense, if you’re going to cremate him,” she said, and then parrotted, “May Agni burn away your sins, and may you live forever in Agni’s eternal flame.”

_ no no no no i will take him child no _

The wind around us didn’t abate.

“I’m sorry, Wu,” I said, shifting back, so I could bow my head to him without dropping my head onto his chest. “And thank you for saving Huitzilin’s life. I am forever in your debt.”

I could have said the words to him in life, as he had lain dying, but I hadn’t.

_ no no no no no _ , the wind whispered.

And Wu didn’t say anything, because Wu was dead.

Ty Lee petted my back in comfort, and I straightened. “My house will not forget what you have done for me.”

I drew out my firestarter, elected to interpret the  _ no no no no  _ of the winds whipping around my ears as a conveniently awful auditory hallucination, and tried to light Wu’s incredibly fireproof uniform with my pitiful little fire starter.

I tried again, failed again.

Tried a third time, failed a third time.

I bowed my head to the dirt, and clenched my eyes closed. It was fine.

This was fine.

I could deal with this.

We were on an arena of dirt, with nothing flammable in sight. We had a camp full of soldiers that couldn’t help us to our left, and a jungle to ten minutes walk to our right.

A ten minute walk, with a—

“ _ Autumn Lord accept my plea _ ,” Ty Lee said, and I raised my face. “ _ Grant peace to those taken from us in fire and blood. Take their pain in your infinite expanse, and free them from their mortal agony. Make them not ash but air, take those taken from us to live within us, forevermore. _ ”

The wind raged, no longer whispering but screaming, yelling.

_ yes yes child i will accept the betrayer’s child yes yes yes yes _ .

There was no white light, no fire, no heat, just wind, raging, screaming wind, around us, before us, wind thick with bright red autumn leaves, despite the fact there wasn’t a deciduous tree in hundreds of miles. The the leaves were all around us, thick enough I should have been breathing it in, the wind strong enough it should have been sucking the air from my lungs, choking me, but it wasn’t.

I breathed, and air turned against the torrent, and air entered my lungs instead of leaves.

The wind cleared, and where Wu’s body had lain was now nothing but a furrow in the dirt of the arena, scoured down to the stone.

Ty Lee bowed forward, her face where Wu’s body had lain, and breathed in.

She straightened, and turned to me, face solemn.

“What did you do, Ty Lee?”

“Your thing wasn’t working,” she said, scritching a finger at the fire starter that had tumbled from my fingers. “And the wind said it would be fine. Besides, Agni let Azula kill him. Agni didn’t deserve him.”

I blinked.

_ You just sacrificed a firebender to the Autumn Lord _ , I didn’t say.

“Thank you, Ty Lee,” I said instead, looking at the long scratches in the stone at the bottom of the furrow.

“You’re welcome, Mai.” She paused, squirming, and then continued. “But you gotta,” she made a little bowing motion, like she had done. “Breathe him in. It’s not done until you do it.”

I stared at Ty Lee’s awkward expression. “We did it in the packing district all the time, it’s fine.”

Right.

Because “it is regularly done in the packing district” was a reason to do anything.

I bowed my head to where Wu had been, and breathed in, prepared for the stench of ash and charred flesh that haunted the air moments before. Instead, I smelled nothing but fresh-cut leaves.

“Now it’s done,” Ty Lee said. “He’ll be with you forever now. Also, me, I guess. Eventually everyone, it’s complicated.”

I pushed myself up, and my eyes fell on the long, bloody furrows he had left in the dirt that the wind hadn’t blown away.

“Right,” I said.

I knelt there, for a long moment, and rose my gaze to the rock that Azula had leapt over to chase after Eztli. I remembered what Azula had said to Eztli.

I remembered—

_ What are you crying for, Ty Lee—I did this for you _ .

“She did it for me,” I said.

“What?”

“Azula was going to kill Huitzilin, and then torture Eztli, and she was going to do it for me. Wu died stopping her.”

Ty Lee set a hand on my shoulder, and I looked to her.

“Azula never does anything for anyone but Azula,” Ty Lee said, and her voice was uncharacteristically cold. “Don’t let her trick you into thinking anything else.”

Unlike me, Ty Lee had always liked Azula. She had loved Azula.

I saw no love in her eyes now.

I turned away, and Ty Lee squeezed my shoulder before closing the distance between us and leaning her weight up against me.

Looking back at the crag, I couldn’t help but wonder if Eztli could outrun Azula. She knew the island, knew the lay of the land. By all reasonable metrics, she should be able to outrun Azula, but nothing about Azula was reasonable.

Last time, I had lied to Azula about which direction she had gone.

This time, I had no opportunity to lie.

“What are we going to do, Ty Lee? She’ll never stop.”

"If she’ll never stop, then I guess we’ll just have to stop her, then, won’t we?”

I looked down at Ty Lee’s pale, resigned face.

Eventually, we would have to go back down to the camp. I would have to look in Li’s eyes when he learned I was the reason his captain was dead. We would have to face Azula again.

But right now, we were alone. If no one had climbed up to the arena at Wu’s screams, then no one would, looking for us.

The sun was high in the sky above us. We couldn’t chase after Azula, and we didn’t have to do anything but chase after Azula.

We had time.

“Tell me about the circus, Ty Lee,” I said. “Tell me what you’re going to do when you go back.”

Ty Lee blinked, slow and heavy, and then turned her face up to me. Slowly, she smiled.

“We had one fire thrower from the colonies who couldn’t firebend,” she said. “His name was Haochen, and—”


	14. Book 1 - Chapter 7

When we returned to the camp, the sun setting on the western horizon, Azula was waiting for us, having somehow gotten back to the camp without passing through the arena, despite the fact it was the only way I knew of to get back to the camp other than  _ swimming _ .

“Are you done?” she asked.

“Yes,” I said, Ty Lee leaning against me.

“I trust you didn’t cremate him?” Azula asked, her smile neutral, like we were talking about the weather, and not Azula’s murder victim. “Because that would be treason.”

“We buried him,” I lied. “Do you want to see the grave?”

“What would you do if I said I did?” she asked, still smiling.

I’d have to think of a new and more convincing lie.

“Don’t worry, Mai,” Azula said. “I won’t.”

“Great.”

A heavy silence hung between us, and over Azula’s shoulder I saw a very familiar pair of shoulders. Li turned to us, and he wasn’t wearing his mask.

“No,” I said.

Azula smiled.

“Oh, Mai, I’d like to introduce you to our new captain,” Azula said, looking over her shoulder, and beckoning Li forward.

My heart rose in my chest, trying to wrap itself around my trachea and choke me from the inside out.

Li came at Azula’s call, back straight but not too straight, head bowed a little but not too much, because he was a noble, and not a soldier.

“Meet Captain Feng,” Azula said, once he was standing beside her, and a half a step behind her. On his arm were the four bars of a captain. 

He bowed his head. “It will be an honor to serve you as long as you are on my ship,” he said.

Wu’s screams echoed in my brain, but now they weren’t Wu’s screams.

They were Li’s.

“I promoted him because you’re such close friends, so that you can spend more time together,” Azula lied with a smile.

“Thank you, Princess,” I said, and the words tasted like ash in my mouth.

“Unlike Wu, Captain Feng is a man who understands that actions have consequences,” Azula said. “Right, Mai?”

My heart got tired of choking me, and decided to try go to the source, and twist itself around my lungs.

“This is mean, Princess,” Ty Lee said, her voice quiet, but not small.

Azula’s expression chilled, and she turned her gaze to Ty Lee. Ty Lee didn’t flinch under her gaze.

“You can go, Captain Feng,” Azula said, still meeting Ty Lee’s eyes, and Li bowed his head. Our eyes met as he rose his face, but he didn’t hesitate before turning away, and walking back to the camp. “I couldn’t catch Eztli,” Azula continued, once he was out of earshot, “she probably crawled back into whatever hole the Sun Warriors have holed themselves up in.”

Part of me was stupidly relieved, considering what I knew would be coming next. 

“So I’m going to go and burn this entire island down, until they all come out, and or all die in the flames.”

She wasn’t smiling anymore. There wasn’t anything expression on her face at all.

She seemed to understand that neither of us wanted this, because she didn’t wait for us. She walked around us, back to the cliffs—

“Princess, wait,” Ty Lee said, pushing herself off of me and reaching towards Azula. “Please, Princess, don’t do this.”

Ty Lee stumbled, and I caught her.

Azula didn’t turn.

“If you don’t want to see it, Ty Lee, you don’t have to come.”

Azula continued walking away.

“Princess!” Ty Lee said, turning after Azula. “Princess, wait!”

Azula didn’t wait.

I looked at Azula. I looked at Ty Lee, her face frustrated, and pained.

“Why now?” she said, under her breath, one hand on her side, another on one of her legs that was shaking under her weight. “Why—”

In the echoes I could still hear of Wu’s screams, his voice was Ty Lee’s.

“What are you going to do about your flames?” I asked, each word tasting like ash, and Azula stopped, back rigid. “The Sun Warriors know how the secret to the blue flames,” I continued, “Eztli had them. If you kill them all—”

“There’s apparently another temple, on the South Pole, that was dedicated to the Blue Flames—to the ‘betrayer’s flames’. Their scrolls conveniently lacked any information on how to unlock the blue flames, but I’m sure the Southern Temple will have what I need. I don’t need the Sun Warriors anymore—I can do whatever I want with them.”

Azula continued walking, ten feet from the cliff, five feet.

_ If she’ll never stop, then I guess we’ll just have to stop her, then, won’t we? _

“Princess, wait for us,” I said, and Azula stopped.

What were three lives, against hundreds?

I slid my hand around Ty Lee’s waist, and she slid her hand around my shoulders. Azula waited, a motionless, straight-backed statue, and we slowly limped our way over to her side.

She looked over at me, at my hand on Ty Lee’s bandaged side, at Ty Lee.

“Give her to me,” she said, like Ty Lee was an object to be carried around her.

I gave Ty Lee to her anyways.

She scooped Ty Lee up in her arms, and I remembered, when we were eight, and Azula scooped Ty Lee up like this, for the first time.

_ I always wanted to be a Princess _ , Ty Lee had said.

_ When I’m Fire Lord _ , Azula had responded,  _ I’ll make you a princess _ .

This time, Ty Lee was silent, wrapping her hands around Azula for stability as Azula rocketed the both of them into the air, up and over the cliff before us like it was no taller than my family’s manor wall.

I watched her go, red flames on her heels.

We won’t be able to get away. And if we can’t get away, it’s better that we’re dead when they find us.

I crawled up the cliff, hand over hand, and Azula was waiting for me, Ty Lee still in her arms. They were both silent.

I had poisoned knives, but that wouldn’t be enough. Taking away Azula’s bending would be a temporary fix, but Azula would never stop.

We had to stop her.

We crossed the arena, down the path, out into the jungle. Azula wasn’t quite crazy enough to set the jungle on fire from the inside, so we continued in silence. I kept my hands clear of my sheaths, knitted my fingers together as I followed Azula down the path to the city. Azula marched us through the city, its shadows long and eerie as ever in the waning sunlight as she wound us to the western edge of the city, and down a much smaller, much more overgrown path that led back into the jungle.

This path didn’t even have walking stones, and we walked on bark and moss. The moss was damp but not really wet, and made me feel very strongly that I was walking around in wet socks.

We stepped out of the jungle, and onto a beach, not so different from the beach we had made camp, except for the fact it extended as far as the eye could see to our right, and up to the other side of the mountains on the other.

“She went this way,” Azula said, to neither of us. “So it’s a good as a place as any to start.”

She set Ty Lee on the sand, and then walked back to the jungle.

She rubbed her hands together, and I waited. A few acres of burned jungle were nothing. The only time I had ever caught Azula off guard was when she had been in the middle of burning my manor to the ground. She had been immersed in the feel of it, in the sound of it, in the taste of the ash on the air. She had been nine, and I hadn’t recognized the look in her eye until I was thirteen.

Ty Lee didn’t wait.

“No,” she said. She walked, stumbled, limped, walked some more, until she was past Azula, and then in the first feet of the jungle. She held her hands out on both sides. “I won’t let you do this,” 

“I thought we were done with this,” Azula said, her voice still unpleasantly flat.

“I lied,” Ty lee said. “If you want to burn this jungle so badly, you’re going to have to go through me.”

“Oh, Ty Lee,” Azula said, her voice still in that distressing monotone. She pulled her hands away from each other, red flames dancing on her fingertips, and then sliced both of her hands out before her, towards the jungle. I fumbled my fingers against my sleeves in my panic to get at my poisoned knife before I remembered  _ I wasn’t wearing it _ . It was still in the dirt of the arena.

But it didn’t matter, because Azula’s red flames parted around Ty Lee, and caught the jungle around her on fire instead. The flames raged, and Ty Lee was left untouched.

“How you underestimate me.”

Ty Lee turned to look at the burning jungle around her eyes wide. There was fear in her eyes, but dismay, too. She set her jaw, and reached towards a burning trunk, but the flames parted before her hands.

“Azula!” she shouted, because Ty Lee could get away with calling Azula Azula to her face. “Stop this!”

“No,” Azula said. “They have to pay for what they’ve done to you. What they’ve done to Mai. What they’ve done to  _ me _ .”

Ty Lee screamed in frustration. She turned back, stumbled, tried to outrace the parting of the flames before her hands, and failed. She crumpled to the blackened, ashy ground, and even the ash parted around her face.

Azula’s flat expression was starting to break. Her golden eyes were starting to shine, both in reflection of the red flames roaring before her, and from within. A look I had seen in her eyes, six years ago.

I took a deep breath.

I had to be calm. I could panic later.

After it was all done.

I should have done this two hours ago, in the jungle, but I hadn’t.

Better late than never.

I walked to the right, out of Azula’s line of sight, and her gaze didn’t follow me. She didn’t tense, although her breathing began to grow ragged.

My sharpest knives were always in the second set of sheathes on my left arm, so I closed my hands before me, and slid two knives from their sheaths.

Azula didn’t glance back at me, didn’t move. I couldn’t see Ty Lee, anymore, hidden behind Azula’s silhouette, but I could hear her yelling.

I passed one knife to my left hand, spread my stance, pinched my remaining knife between my thumb and the area between the second and third knuckle of my right index finger. This was the first form I had ever learned. The first form I’d ever been able to throw a knife from. I knew more, now, but I was more accurate in this one than I’d ever been in any others.

It was hard to kill someone from behind. It was easier to do it from the front, or even the side, but it wasn’t impossible.

When I was six years old, I heard about the Onmitsu for the first time, assassins who killed from the shadows, who killed without anyone ever knowing their names. I wanted to be an Onmitsu when I was six.

I learned knives so I could kill for my country, before I learned what either of those things really meant.

I breathed in, breathed out.

“I’m sorry, Azula,” I said, under my breath.

Water swirled around my feet, disturbing my stance. I reset myself, as Azula’s shoulders heaved, and the jungle burned.

I rose my hand again, and part of my couldn’t help but think—

I’m over a hundred feet from the shore.

_ That’s enough _ , a voice said, like a railroad spike through my skull, and every flame in the jungle died.

A massive, amorphous shadow fell over me, and I looked up.

Above me was an enormous red dragon head. Directly above me, no more than ten or twenty feet. Azula turned as well, and I dropped my hands to my side, where my sleeves hid the knives I had been planning to use to kill her.

_ I will not let you burn my island to the ground _ , the dragon said, each word carving themselves into my brain.

I stumbled back, away from the dragon, as Azula’s eyes cleared, and her eyes focused upon it.

“I’m not asking permission,” she said, and her eyes fell upon me, her expression faintly confused as her eyes flicked back to where she had last seen me. She dropped her gaze to my sleeves, her expression tightened, and she turned back to the dragon.

_ I am Shaw _ , the dragon said, each word its own agony. I kept walking back, further and further from Shaw, but its scale was such that no step really felt like it was taking my any further from its massive bulk.  _ I am Agni’s will made manifest _ .

“Are you going to run away from me like that blue dragon ran?”

_ Ran is merciful _ , Shaw said.  _ In ways that I am not _ .  _ You have hurt our children, burned our island, and most of all _ , Shaw opened its mouth, and a horrible air splitting roar ripped from between its massive jaws,  _ You harmed Ran _ .

My feet hit ash, rather than sand, and I looked back to find myself in the jungle, burned and blackened trees all around me. To my left, Ty Lee was sitting in the ash, staring up at Shaw’s massive figure.

I slipped my knives back into their sheathes on my left arm.

I could hear Azula’s snort from where I was as she settled back into Sozin’s primary stance. On the plus side, Shaw seemed more than willing to kill Azula for me, which meant I might not have to die. My family also might not have to die. 

This was good.

There was a very angry dragon that probably wanted us all dead.

This was probably not good.

_ I will give you one chance _ , Shaw said, and my skull pulsed with every word.  _ Leave, and tell no one of what you’ve found here, and I will let you live _ .

“Is that what you told Iroh?” Azula asked with a laugh as I reached Ty Lee’s side, and crouched in the ash beside her.

_ No. Iroh did not come to my island and try and massacre my people _ .

“I knew he was a traitor,” Azula hissed.

“You were behind Azula,” Ty Lee said, under her breath. “What were you doing back there?”

“That’s not important,” I said, realizing we were directly behind Azula, and therefore directly in the path of whatever Shaw was going to throw at her. I pulled Ty Lee to her feet, and started pulling her away, back to the open sand to our right, away from what I strongly suspected would very rapidly be on fire.

_ What is your answer, child? Will you leave us in peace, or will you die? _

“You’re not going to try and help Azula, like you did with that other dragon,” Ty Lee said, doing her best to help, but not really helping. The bandage on her side was a dark, and was beginning to ooze. There was a moment of silence, and then she continued. “You were going to kill her. While she was distracted by the fire, you were going to kill her.”

I looked down at Ty Lee, and she looked back up at me.

“You want that dragon to kill her,” she said.

Before us, Azula laughed.

“I wish I could make you watch your children burn,” Azula said. “But I guess I’m going to have to kill you first.”

_ If you will not leave, child _ , the dragon roared.  _ You will burn. _

Sure enough, red flames engulfed the area where we had just been, raging over the ash and back into the jungle. Azula had, of course, dodged out of the way so that we were once again on the other side of her from the dragon.

Thanks, Azula.

We kept walk-limping.

“That’s not what I meant,” Ty Lee said, as Shaw brought down a massive claw down upon where Azula had been standing. The air lit with lightning. “When I said we would have to stop her.”

We kept walk-limping, as the air lit with fire and lighting and slashes of massive, three foot claws. We were clear of the fire zone, long clear, and we stopped.

“We can’t stop her any other way,” I said, as Azula was wrapped in fire, and the fire began to spin. Shaw, however, didn’t pour more flames into it, and dodged out of the way of Azula’s returning blast.

“There has to be another way,” Ty Lee said.

Azula cried out as she was caught by a slash of Shaw’s claws, and sent flying across the sands, away from us. There was blood in the air, now, but Azula wasn’t dead.

I had been planning on killing her, five minutes ago, but I still couldn’t imagine her dead.

Sure enough, she stood, with nothing more than scratches on her arm where Shaw had tried to slice her into four pieces.

“When has Azula ever changed her mind?”

Shaw opened its mouth, and white lightning flashed out of it. Azula just barely got away, but Shaw didn’t close its mouth. Again and again and again, lightning lashed from between its jaws, breathing lightning like it breathed fire, but lightning wasn’t bent.

It was only thrown.

Azula had no choice but to run.

_ What’s wrong, child, didn’t anyone ever teach you to bend lightning? _

“There’s always a way,” Ty Lee said, and she turned looked at me, grey eyes wide, and sincere. “I was born an orphan in the packing district, and I’m now cohort to the Crown Princess, and my sisters are nobles. There’s  _ always  _ a way.”

I opened my mouth to respond, but couldn’t find anything to say.

Azula had defied the Fire Lord for Ty Lee. She had killed Onmitsu for Ty Lee. She had rewritten the law for Ty Lee.

“Promise you won’t try to kill her again.”

“She’s going to die fighting that dragon.”

“We both know she won’t,” Ty Lee said. “Promise me.”

I turned to Azula, catching a lightning bolt to the shoulder, and tossed across the bright red sand. She rose with a scream of red flame, and charged at Shaw, dipping and dodging through the lightning rain, and then leaping through the air and crashing onto Shaw’s shoulder.

Fire flared around her fist as she drove it between Shaw’s scales, and Shaw screamed in pain.

Azula was thrown free, but she was laughing as she fell.

“I can’t promise you that,” I said, and my left hand went numb.

I looked down, at Ty Lee, but her fist was already halfway across my body, and I could do nothing but watch as her fist tapped three points in quick succession on my right hand, and it fell numb as well.

“What did you do, Ty Lee?” I said, hands flopping limply into my lap.

“Now you can’t throw your knives,” Ty Lee said. “I won’t let you kill her,” she said. “No matter what.”

Shaw finally pulled its enormous red body from the waves, and took to the air. Up and up and up it went, until finally the end of its tail was pulled from the waves. Azula looked so very, very small beneath it.

Shaw roared a roar of red flame down upon her, a fountain of bright red flame that swallowed up the entire beach, and Azula roared back.

Even where we were, the heat was almost unbearable, the light almost blinding. Around Azula, the fire began to spin. Fifty feet of flames, one hundred feet of flames, all began to move. Spin in, towards Azula.

Shaw stopped, but it was too late.

The ball of flames around Azula grew larger, and larger, spinning faster, spinning brighter, and spinning whiter.

“What if it’s Azula or the Sun Warriors?”

Ty Lee hesitated.

“It won’t be,” she said. “I won’t let it.”

The ball of flames flattened into a ring of flames, Azula in its center, and Shaw let loose a barrage of lightning that never managed to hit Azula.

“Burn,” she said, stepping forward as a bolt of lightning crashed behind her, and swung her hands up.

White flames surged up from around her, blazing up towards Shaw like an inverted shooting star. Shaw moved its massive clawed hands before itself, but the white flames rolled over its claws like they weren’t there, like they had no hold over it, and Shaw’s face was engulfed in white flame.

Shaw screamed as it was physically thrown into the air, its wings flapping wildly in an attempt to keep it in the air, before failing, and dropping into the ocean in a tangled mess.

Azula laughed a horrible, victorious laugh.

“What if it’s Azula or one of the last two dragons?” I asked.

Ty Lee hesitated, and looked to where Azula was approaching the waves.

“What’s wrong, you’re not going to run? I’ll let you run, so you can watch your children burn,” she said, her face in the twisted joy of fire.

Beside me Ty Lee nodded.

“I won’t let it,” she said.

And then she stood.

“Ty Lee—” I said, but she was already walking, limping, towards where Azula was approaching the shore where the dragon was untangling itself. Its red face was now scarred black, and one of its eyes could barely open.

Azula lit red fire blades on her knuckles.

“I wonder how many times I’m going to have stab you with these, until you finally die,” she said.

But before her, Shaw wasn’t looking at her.

It was looking at Ty Lee. It was looking at me.

Slowly, Azula turned to follow her gaze, and her expression froze.

“Touch them and die—” she said, but she was interrupted by Shaw’s enormous tail, sweeping across the beach, and crashing into her, tossing her across the sand, and into the cliffs behind her with a crack. She saw it coming, but not fast enough to do anything but block it.

Shaw’s eyes were still on us.

I stood. “Ty Lee, we need to run.”

Ty Lee nodded, staggering back, but Shaw was faster than she could ever be.

Than I could ever be.

_ What did she do to you? _ Shaw asked, claws coming crashing down on either side of us, its head far, far above us.  _ Did she steal your bending because you weren’t firebenders? Did she steal your bending because you were better firebenders than her? _

“Please,” I said, lifting my floppy, useless hands (dammit, Ty Lee). “You misunderstand—”

_ It doesn’t matter _ , Shaw interrupted me, lifting its claws above us, blocking out the sun.  _ I can fix what she has broken. _

Across the beach, Azula screamed an inhuman, unholy scream of rage, pain, and despair.

Shaw’s claws came crashing down upon us, and it wasn’t going to cut us in half, no, that would be too kind of a death—

One of its claws came barelling towards my face, the other towards my chest—it was going to impale us, and—

Shaw’s eyes glowed, the end of Shaw’s claws glowed.

Its claws touched my skin, and my world went white with pain.

I had thought that being skewered in the face, would have been a quick death. A single moment of pain, and then the blessed, sweet release of death. I thought I might feel the claw entering my body, and then nothing.

I was wrong.

It felt like my mind was being sucked through a cheese grater. It was a pain so intense I couldn’t feel anything else. I didn’t know if I had a body, or what it felt, or even how many pieces it was in.

Nothing but a hole being opened up in my mind, in my soul, a horrible, sucking hole that threatened to suck the entirety of me out with it. It grew and it grew and it grew and then it grew some more.

With each inch it grew, it screamed in agony.

Agony, and loss.

I should be full, it screamed and it screamed and it screamed, there is something missing, you are  _ not whole _ .

It opened and it opened and it opened until it was all that I was, I was nothing but  _ nothing _ where there should have been  _ something _ .

And then the world was chaos and blue fire and screams.

I could see again, I could hear again, I could feel my limbs again. I was still  _ nothing  _ where there should have been  _ something _ , I was still in agony, but I could see again.

I could hear again.

I could feel my limbs again.

The screams were mine, they were Ty Lee’s, they were Shaw’s…

And they were Azula’s.

Above me were Shaw’s massive claws, around me deep furrows in the ash and the dirt.

They came crashing down upon me again as Shaw screamed and claws at the ground. I could see down its throat, see blue fire raging and burning and smoke was pouring from its mouth.

The first seizure missed, but the second wouldn’t have.

I rolled to the side, tripped over my useless fucking hands, and continued to roll out of the way of the Shaw’s next agonized seizure.

I gritted my teeth against my scream, and swallowed back the horrible, aching pain in my everything. I moved, rolling from my shoulder up to my feet, and out of the way of Shaw’s tormented clawings at the ground.

I looked up, at the crazed eyes of a dying dragon, over to the claw that I had thought had killed me, and then over at where Ty Lee still lay, motionless beneath the dragon’s claw.

She wasn’t screaming anymore. She had stopped, some time in the last minute while I wasn’t paying attention. She had stopped because she had fallen unconscious. (Ty Lee had never had a high pain tolerance.) She had fallen unconscious, directly beneath a crazed dragon’s claws.

I ran, between the claws, until I was over her, but when I dropped my hands to pick her up, they flopped, uselessly, before me.

Shaw’s claw crashed down upon me, crushing me into Ty Lee, but we were crushed by the palm, leaving us bruised, but alive.

And then I heard it.

Azula.

Wordless, inhuman wails. Not of agony, but of grief.

Azula was crying. Weeping.

And she was killing the dragon whose dying seizures were going to kill me and Ty Lee.

_ All I had to was kill the person I loved most _ , I remembered.

The flames around us were blue. The flames burning Shaw alive from the inside out were blue.

“Princess!” I shouted, moving Ty Lee over, out of the way of an enormous claw with an elbow, but Azula didn’t hear me. “Princess, please!” Another elbow, and I was crushed against Ty Lee.

The hand went up, high above us. I could barely breathe, I might have had broken ribs. I couldn’t take it again, whether the claws cut me in half or not.

I could see Azula, without the dragon’s arm in the way, but she wasn’t looking at us. She wasn’t looking at anything.

“Princess!”

Nothing.

“Princess!”

Nothing.

Above us, the claw began to desceneded.

“Azula!” I screamed at her.

Azula’s eyes focused, and her voice cut off, mid wail. She turned, slowly, towards me, towards Ty Lee beneath me, towards the dragon claw descending down upon us.

Our eyes met, and the blue flames around us all turned to red.

“Please—”

Azula moved, red flames lighting at her heels and at her fists throwing her in our direction, spraying red hot sand behind her. But she was too far. She would never reach us in time.

I looked up at the claw that would kill me.

I looked over at the face of the dragon that would kill me. Smoke no longer poured from its mouth, its teeth no longer glowed blue with the fire killing it.

Our eyes met, and its claw slowed.

Not a lot, but just enough.

Azula crashed down above us, one hand on the thick tree branch beneath us, and the other catching the massive dragon claw that came crashing down upon us.

The branch beneath us groaned, wood splintering, Azula’s bones groaned, breath hissing from her teeth, but neither broke. Azula flexed her arm, and threw the dragon claw off of us.

She turned away from the dragon, like it was nothing, beneath her notice, and turned her bloodshot, teary-eyed gaze to me.

Her free hand shook as she lowered it to my face.

“You’re alive,” she said, her nails sharp and painful on my cheek. She turned to Ty Lee’s unconscious form, and lifted her other hand from the branch to touch Ty Lee’s face.

Ty Lee’s eyes opened, and she looked up at Azula.

When I looked back to where the dragon had been, behind Azula, the air was empty, nothing but a long, wide trough in the sand, leading back to the ocean.

Ty Lee groaned in pain, I moved off of her, and flopped onto the dirt beside the branch she had been crushed into.

Her groan raised in pitch into a high, pitiful whine.

“Princess,” she said, and her head lolled back. “It hurts.”

It did.

It didn’t hurt like it did before, it didn’t make me wish for a swift death. But it still hurt. It ached, a throbbing that pounded in my skull.

I might have had broken ribs. I definitely had bruised ribs, and every breath hurt. But it was nothing compared to the horrible aching inside of me. Somewhere deep inside of me, that I had never known existed before.

It ached and it throbbed and it burned and it said to me—

_ I am nothing, where there should be something _ .

“ _ Princess _ ,” Ty Lee continued to whine, squirming. She cried out as she tried to move. “Make it—”

Azula stood, the flames around us that had faded away lit again. Her face twisted into a horrible mask of hate that I had seen on her face before she had threatened Huitzilin, but about a hundred times worse.

There would be nothing left of this island. Nothing but sand and ash.

My hands were still numb, and useless at my sides.

“I’ll kill it,” Azula said, teeth gritted. “I promise, Ty Lee, I’ll—”

Ty Lee’s hand snapped up to Azula’s and gripped it like a vice. Azula stopped speaking.

“Princess, please,” Ty Lee said. “I don’t care if they live or die, I just don’t want to be here anymore. I’m tired of this island hurting me, please.”

Her voice broke, and she choked on her words.

“Please, Princess. I’m begging you. I’m so scared, and I’m so tired, please.”

Slowly, Azula’s mask of rage broke, and fell away.

She knelt at Ty Lee’s side.

“Okay,” she said. She leaned down, and pulled Ty Lee into her arms. “Okay, we’ll leave.” 

“Promise me,” Ty Lee said, and I could see her face now. She was crying, leaking fluids from every orifice available on her face. “Azula, promise me.”

Azula’s hand tightened on Ty Lee.

“I promise,” she said, and it almost sounded like  _ I’m sorry _ .

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Last chapter of this "book". The next one isn't done yet, so there won't be updates for a while.


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